Merry Christmas, buddy.
In Iron Man 3, Tony Stark goes head-to-head
with a despotic madman known only as the Mandarin.
Film sees Tony stripped of his access
to his massive wealth, copious technological advancements,
and stranded alone with only the help of this little boy.
This threequel in the grand Marvel manner
would be the last solo outing for RDJ's iconic arms dealer
with a heart of gold.
It's a somber character study about the realities of loss,
the struggles of a superhero's identity,
and being alone during the holiday season, which
creates a separate question.
Is Iron Man 3 a Christmas movie?
Christmas-time is pretty much ubiquitously known
as this warm, joyous celebration of the people
we value and a sure sign of another year coming to an end.
It's a holiday synonymous with friends, family, loved ones.
It also has a long tradition of producing some of the finest
films of all time--
It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street,
and White Christmas are all delightful entries
into cinematic canon that is Christmas movies.
However, for many films Christmas fulfills
a much different, often functional purpose,
which is how we get to Iron Man 3.
So when is a Christmas movie not a Christmas movie?
Well, first, let's define what a Christmas movie might actually
be-- so usually, films that are about the holiday of Christmas
in some way or another, either thematically or literally.
It's linked to the holiday, the iconography
of the holiday and its themes directly through the narrative.
Basically, if you were to change the holiday
to anything other than Christmas,
the movie shouldn't work.
If a film can have the word Christmas deleted
from its story and still work without major rewriting,
then it's probably not a Christmas movie.
To illustrate this, let's use Elf.
Despite most of its runtime not taking place
on the literal day of Christmas, its main character
is an elf, which is obviously linked Old Saint Nick.
And the film happens during the holiday season.
But more importantly, it takes the style and function
of the Rankin-Bass holiday specials
and infuses it into the live action world.
It's about family learning to accept people for who they are
and embracing the childlike wonder that
lives within all of us.
It's linked to Christmas both on a thematic and literal level.
Merry Christmas!
On the inverse end of the spectrum,
this is the argument that happens about Die Hard a lot.
Die Hard takes place during the Christmas season,
but it's not hyper focused on the thematic or literal
realities of Christmas.
Merry Christmas!
Which, to some, makes it-- well, not a Christmas movie.
In fact, there are many films that
use Christmas in a similar way.
Shane Black, director of The Nice Guys and Predators
is practically a one-man cottage industry
when it comes to movies set on or around Christmas.
Over his nearly four-decade career,
he's written and directed five movies
that all take place on Christmas or feature Christmas
in some way predominantly that aren't really Christmas movies.
(SINGING) Silent Night.
Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,
and The Long Kiss Goodnight all utilize
Christmas as a plot mechanic.
They're not Christmas movies per se,
but they're movies that use Christmas to emphasize
the loneliness, desperation, or isolation of its characters
during that time of year.
Lethal Weapon follows two cops as they're
attempting to stop a drug trafficking ring.
One of them has recently lost his wife,
making him question if he even wants to live.
The pain and emotional trauma he's
going through due to the absence of his beloved partner
is compounded by the movie taking place
on Christmas, a time that allows us, the audience,
to immediately understand why this
is a pertinent time of year that he'd wish
to be with his deceased wife.
And lo and behold, Shane Black also
wrote and directed Iron Man 3.
Hot off his indie comeback film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,
Robert Downey Jr. suggested Black to helm the third Iron
Man film.
After creative relationships between Marvel Studios and Iron
Man 1 and 2 director Jon Favreau kind of soured,
Black wanted to do something different with Iron Man 3.
He wanted to interrogate the idea of what
makes Iron Man Iron Man.
Is it the suit or the person inside the suit?
Tony Stark is always someone who's
struggled with balance, just like Black himself.
They both had addiction issues, rose to prominence
as young men, became very wealthy young,
and are viewed as geniuses in their field.
Most people forget just how successful
and acclaimed Shane Black was as a young screenwriter.
His brand of irreverent writing and bouncy dialogue
became industry standard.
He sold multiple original spec scripts for millions of dollars
in the '80s and '90s.
And guess what?
It all came tumbling down, just like Stark's life eventually
would.
In Iron Man 3, Black uses Christmas
to emphasize how isolated and alone Tony really is.
After his home was attacked by the Mandarin,
Tony goes on the run with only one suit.
To make things worse, it has a damaged power cell.
This causes him to go into hiding while simultaneously
attempting to overcome PTSD-induced panic
attacks from the fallout of his previous encounters
at the battle of New York, as we saw in Avengers 1.
Over the course of the film, Tony is pushed to his limits,
and he's pushed the limits essentially all alone even,
without a suit.
And you want to guess how Christmas plays into the story?
You probably got it.
It amplifies the loneliness and complicates his relationships.
But does the fact that this is happening during the holiday
season make the film a Christmas movie?
Again, Christmas for many people is the one day
of the year they're forced to come
to terms with their position in life
or their connections to the world around them
in a very tangible, emotional way, whether good or bad.
For Shane Black's films, the Christmas element
comes into play predominantly in the second act,
which is when, in the traditional three-act
structure, everything seems like it can't get worse.
When asked why he did this repeatedly in his work,
Black once said, "Christmas represents a little stutter
in the march of days, a hush in which we have a chance
to assess and retrospect our lives.
I tend to think also that it just informs as a backdrop."
And Iron Man 3 is a perfect example
of this idea in practice.
Iron Man 3 was never intended to be released during the holiday
season.
It was never developed as a Christmas movie.
It was released May 3, 2013.
Iron Man 3 is about stripping down Tony Stark to just the man
in order to see if he is a superhero
or if his suit is what's so super.
And obviously, we get the answer we all
want as the film ends with him uttering his trademark
catchphrase.
I am Iron Man.
But this idea isn't exclusive to Shane Black.
Many filmmakers and writers utilize
Christmas to push their characters in unexpected ways.
Gremlins, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands,
Star Trek Generations, and Trading Places
all use Christmas as a plot mechanic
to emotionally heighten or manipulate their protagonists
into thinking about their past actions
and questioning if they've made the right choices.
Star Trek Generations literally has a scene
where Picard goes into a parallel dream world
and meets a bouncing brood of children he never had
and the wife he never made time to meet
and debates staying there with his fictional family
as they celebrate Christmas together for all eternity.
Christmas in Generations is a symbol.
It's a siren's call to an easier, pain-free existence.
This sequence in the film might be the pitch-perfect example
of what's being discussed right here.
It's Christmas purely as a mechanic, a narrative device.
It exists within the framework purely
to push the protagonist to make a choice.
That's what writing is, after all.
It's putting characters in situations
where they have to make tough decisions,
where they have to change, so that the audience can
learn from those choices and live vicariously in some way
through them, whether literally or thematically.
It's been said that film is an engine that generates empathy,
and using Christmas as a shortcut
to generate the most empathy, both with the audience
and the characters, is, in a lot of ways, kind of brilliant.
So is Iron Man 3 a Christmas film?
I think you can relatively definitively state no, it's
not.
But it's important to learn from this idea
that Shane Black implements so frequently.
When it comes to writing in particular,
anything and everything can be used to your advantage.
Anything that pushes your characters, anything
that puts the people that you're creating in a position they
don't want to be in or maybe aren't comfortable in
is a good thing, whether that's Christmas or Valentine's Day
or even New Year's Eve.
But it's always worth keeping in mind
that your setting, your time and place,
truly matter beyond what year you're setting something in
or what world it's on.
People need to connect with a place, with a feeling,
so that they, too, can ground themselves
in the story of these characters, which
is why some of the best films are so great at building
their world, or at least the environment
around the people we're supposed to care about.
Doesn't it mean set everything you do against Christmas.
It just means care about what exactly
is going on around the people you're creating.
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