Marvel’s promise to “keep taking risks” creatively into it’s Phase Two is already paying off, as relatively untested director Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 crushed it at the box-office AND with critics. Clinching the second highest domestic opening ever, and pulling in a gross $1,111,096,000 and rocking a 9/10 on IGN, Iron Man 3 is only Black’s second film as a director. Marvel Studios seems to have a knack for boldly pulling creative gem’s out of nowhere, like they did with Joss Whedon.
NOW IM NOT A MATHEMATICIAN OR ANYTHING: but Shane Black’s average rottentomatoes score as a director with only two films turned out to be 80.5%. Meaning that if making movies were like high-school, Black got a B. Pretty impressive. Equally not impressive: one could argue, is Zack Snyder’s average rottentomatoes score as a director with 5 films at 54.4%. Meaning that if making movies were like high-school, Snyder failed. LOLUMADBRO?!?
To make man more like the gods, Prometheus gave him fire, the symbol of light and energy. In harnessing light and energy mankind gains control and understanding of nature. To understand and control is to possess powers, and it is that—the desire for powers—that sets the Promethean apart from others.
— Please Understand Me, p. 47
Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man was born the son of industrialist and inventor Howard Stark. Following in his father’s footsteps, Tony demonstrated his mechanical aptitude and extraordinary inventive genius early: enrolling at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) at the age of 15. Double majors in physics and engineering would keep him busy until age 21, when Stark would tragically inherit his father’s company: Stark Industries. Within a few years, Tony turned Stark Industries into a multi-billion dollar techonology conglomerate specializing in advanced weaponry and munitions. Struck with a fateful piece of shrapnel on a business trip in Afghanistan, Stark invented, designed and built a powered mechanical exoskeleton to save his life. Innovative, resolute, visionary, and cunning Tony Stark is an iconic Rational. Indeed Stark knows, as all Rational’s do, that a mind’s propensity for innovation is at its best in a crisis.
Nice post!