Iron Man 3: Good But Not Great

I went to see Iron Man 3 over the weekend. Twice. With Iron Man 3 opening on May 3rd, Star Wars day on May 4th, and Cinco de Mayo on, well, May 5th, I decided to make a four-day weekend out of it and took vacation days on May 3rd and May 6th. Monday was for, you know, recovering. And who likes Mondays anyway.

My old comic book movie posse reunited for a Friday evening showing of Iron Man 3 and we were not disappointed. Well, I was initially bummed about Ben Kingsley's Mandarin, but then I remembered my previous rant and decided that the twist was worth it. Hell, I was about as surprised as Rhodey was in the movie.

It's pretty rare that movies surprise me anymore. So the surprise sort of endeared me to the movie and the character. Of course, I'm tip-toeing around a spoiler here. And I had no idea it was coming; which is also a rarity given that what I read on the Internet has the potential to spoil just about any surprise. So I have to hand it to the Iron Man 3 secret service, because they kept this twist well under wraps.

So Iron Man 3 was good. I'm not sure how many thumbs or stars or tomatoes I would give it. But it's good. It's not as good as the first Iron Man movie, but it's better than the second one. It won't break into the ranks of my top three Marvel movies. The Avengers, Iron Man, and X2: X-Men United (although, I still hate that title) are all safe in their respective spots.

I also took my nephew to go see it (after I saw it with my friends) and he enjoyed it. With a PG-13 rating, it's probably not a great movie to show a seven-year-old. I'm the crazy uncle. I can get away with stuff like that.

The cause and effect or choice and consequence story-line was brilliant. Tony Stark was/is a little prick and he did things to make many enemies. The things we do can come back to bite us in the ass. Tony is stuck dealing with these things from his past as well as the revelation that occurred to him in The Avengers: he's just a guy in a suit.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to delight: I'm looking forward to what's coming next. Especially the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Enough of This Craziness

Last year's new year post went up on the fifth of January. The fifth. Can you believe that? That's crazy. Well, I'm here to tell you that craziness like that will not be tolerated on the DoNothingMan's blog.

There were 41 posts in the year 2012; that's almost three-and-a-half posts per month. Also a little bit on the crazy side. Let's pull those reins back just a tad and not get ahead of ourselves. On the bright side, I haven't changed my NASA wall calendar. It's still open to December 2012 with a picture from the Hubble telescope and a blurb about dark matter.

So what is on the horizon for the year 2013, the luckiest year of them all? I don't know. Grand Theft Auto 5 is set to come out this spring. Aliens: Colonial Marines has me really excited, but I'll probably be disappointed. There's another Iron Man movie in the works. Three. I'm successfully hacking PSP handhelds now. Fried chicken beam attack.

Yep, this is going to be a good year.