Rabu, 03 April 2019

WhatsApp lets you block randoms from adding you to group chats - Engadget

HStocks via Getty Images

There are two types of people on this planet. Some absolutely relish getting a WhatsApp notification letting them know they've been added to a new group chat -- it's time for gossip! Others, however, would gladly fling their phone into the sun rather than contend with the continual onslaught of new and often pointless messages. Now, finally, WhatsApp is adding controls to help mitigate this trauma.

The Facebook-owned service said that users will now have an option to control who adds them to groups. You can choose "nobody," "my contacts," or "everyone." It's not as granular as some people would like -- you can't choose ­between contacts, for example -- but it will at least put pay to spam-adds from randoms.

If someone tries to add you to a group and your settings prevent it, that person will be asked to send you a private message with an invite link, which will be active for 72 hours. So if you select "nobody" and your aunt wants to get you on board with a group chat for Sandra's baby shower, you've got three days to decide if you can handle it (and you could always feign ignorance if you can't -- "Oh, I didn't see any link. Ah well.")

On a more serious note, though, this new option is an important step in addressing privacy concerns around the app, particularly in countries affected by political turmoil, where organizations have been known to add as many numbers as possible to groups in a bid to champion their cause. It also marks the latest in a number of moves by WhatsApp to increase security. The platform is currently testing an image search tool to combat fake news, has limited message forwarding and recently announced a fact-checking service in India.

The new feature will roll out globally in the next few weeks, and will require the most up-to-date version of WhatsApp. Access it in Settings > Account > Privacy > Groups.

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/03/whatsapp-lets-you-block-randoms-from-adding-you-to-group-chats/

2019-04-03 09:55:29Z
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Soon your TiVo will be able to skip commercials automatically - Engadget

TiVo's manual SkipMode.

As much as technology has advanced in the last couple of decades, the ability to automatically skip commercials has remained mostly in the past. Now Zatz Not Funny says -- based on a Facebook post by an employee and confirmation with a source -- that TiVo's DVRs will get an upgraded version of their SkipMode feature that bypasses commercials automatically.

Because of the way SkipMode works, it will still only apply to recordings of primetime shows on channels that have their commercials marked, unlike the fully automated systems that the Channels app and Tablo boxes are testing. It's also apparently only going to work on boxes upgraded with the latest "Hydra" interface when it rolls out later in the spring.

ReplayTV pushed automatic commercial skipping years ago and fights over the feature with broadcasters and cable companies helped hasten its demise. When Windows Media Center was still supported, the DIY-minded could use ShowAnalyzer, but a fully-supported version of the feature from TiVo would make using it easier than ever, plus it makes watching network TV more like Netflix, Amazon Prime or ad-free Hulu. Our question is whether or not the TV networks will let it go this time around -- even if, or perhaps especially because statistics show DVR owners don't manually skip ads as much as you might think.

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/03/tivo-auto-skipmode-ads/

2019-04-03 09:13:22Z
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Japan Display to Supply OLED Screens for Apple Watch Series 5 - Mac Rumors

Japan Display will supply the OLED screens for this year's new Apple Watch model, according to a new Reuters report out today.


Japan Display Inc will begin to supply organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens for the Apple Watch later this year, two sources said, a breakthrough for the cash-strapped company whose late shift to OLED has cost it orders from Apple.

The supply deal would mark Japan Display’s foray into the OLED display market, the two sources familiar with the matter said, declining to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

The development comes as particularly good news for the liquid crystal display panel supplier, which relied on Apple for more than half of its revenue in the year ended March 2018, and whose mainstay LCD business has been hit heavily by Apple's recent shift away from LCD.

There have been reports of less-than-stellar sales of iPhone XR, which uses LCD. It's also rumored that Apple could drop LCD displays for its 2020 iPhones in favor of an all-OLED line-up. As a result, Japan Display has been seeking investor help that will put it on firmer ground before the switch takes place.

Reuters reported on Monday that Japan Display aims to raise as much as $990 million in new financing as early as this week.

Apple has been working to bolster its OLED display supply chain cut down its reliance on Samsung, which supplies displays for the iPhone X, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max. It has reportedly pushed LG Display to build out its OLED display production facilities, and has even purchased equipment to build an OLED panel research and development site in Taiwan.

Today's report offers little clue as to what the switch to Japan Display OLED screens could mean for the next Apple Watch, save for a note that newer OLED technology is generally thinner and allows more flexibility than LCD screens. For the Apple Watch Series 4, Apple upgraded the display panel to a larger LTPO (Low Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide) OLED Retina Display, which means it is more efficient and consumes less power for better battery life.

According to reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the Apple Watch Series 5, coming in September 2019, will feature a new ceramic casing design, suggesting a possible return of the Apple Watch Edition.

Other rumors suggest a future version of the Apple Watch will adopt solid state buttons that don't physically click but instead provide haptic feedback to users when the buttons are touched. Apple introduced haptic feedback for the Digital Crown in the Series 4, and haptic feedback could potentially extend to the side button.

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https://www.macrumors.com/2019/04/03/japan-display-oled-screens-apple-watch-series-5/

2019-04-03 06:54:00Z
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Report: Apple might finally make the compact iPhone you wanted next year - The Next Web

At TNW, we’ve talked a lot about the absolute lack of compact phones. While I’m using the ‘compact’ iPhone Xs as my daily driver, there are plenty of people who want smaller screen size. According to a report from DigiTimes, Apple’s taken notice and is planning to release a 5.4-inch phone in 2020.

The report notes that Apple will opt for three OLED display sizes – 5.42-inch, 6.06-inch, and 6.67-inch – supplied by either Samsung or LG. This marks a change from the current iPhone line up’s sizes of 5.8-inch (the iPhone Xs),  6.1-inch (the iPhone Xr), and 6.5-inch (the iPhone Xs Max) screens. If the report is accurate, Apple will reduce the size of the smallest model while increasing the size of the biggest model.

The last true small phone from Apple was the iPhone SE, launched in 2016. A year later, reports suggested that the company’s working on a sequel, but that dream never came to fruition.

I hope this is different, and I know I’m not alone in that. A lot of people find the current generation of iPhones too big to comfortably hold and type with. Bigger isn’t always better, and it’d be nice if Cupertino finally realized that

TNW Conference 2019 is coming! Check out our glorious new location, an inspiring line-up of speakers and activities, and how to be a part of this annual tech bonanza by clicking here.

For more gear, gadget, and hardware news and reviews, follow Plugged on Twitter and Flipboard.

Published April 3, 2019 — 05:41 UTC

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https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/04/03/report-apple-might-finally-make-the-compact-iphone-you-wanted-next-year/

2019-04-03 05:41:00Z
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Selasa, 02 April 2019

Microsoft closes its e-book store - Engadget

onurdongel via Getty Images

Did you build your e-book library through the Microsoft Store? You'll need to make a change in plans. Microsoft has not only removed books from its online portal, but plans to remove access to existing purchases and rentals in early July. It's not a complete loss when Microsoft plans to offer refunds in the form of store credit, including $25 extra if you've made annotations before April 2nd. However, that still leaves you paying to re-stock your library through a third-party service -- and any notes you've made will disappear into the ether.

Microsoft didn't publicly explain the move (we've asked for comment). However, ZDNet heard that the company pulled books from its store in a bid to "streamline" its focus, much in the same way that it backed out of digital music. The Microsoft Store is mainly alluring for its apps these days, and dropping books would reflect that priority.

There's also a technical reality that may have prompted the change. Microsoft has touted the current version of Edge as ideal for reading, but it won't have as much of an advantage on that front when it switches to Chromium. Simply put, there might not be much incentive to compete when Microsoft is facing off against e-book giants like Amazon and doesn't have a way to stand out.

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/02/microsoft-store-removes-e-books/

2019-04-02 18:09:44Z
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[Update: Google+ is dead] Google+ dies today, by the hand of Google's apathy - Android Police

After nearly 8 years in service, Google has called time on its social network effort, Google+. By now, any user that might have had some worthwhile memories on the platform should have downloaded their data — yesterday was the last day to do so. But from the last day to the first, the site was mired with challenges through and through.

The network was the latest link in a chain of half-baked efforts in social media. They included interconnect mediums such as Google Wave that were supposed to bring together email, social networks, instant messages, and other sources. Just prior to G+, the company put together a mess of instant messaging features and shoehorned them into Gmail, calling it Google Buzz. It was felled after two years on major privacy failures. Any one of these services served at best as a bridge for people who had to be across many existing social media in their lives, but they were never strong enough to stand as a sole alternative to Facebook and Twitter.

Beginnings

Born on June 28, 2011, the "Google+ project" brought a simple premise to the fore: users could interact with their "Circles" of friends the way they want to, sharing as much or as little information with each as they'd like. People could follow topics or "Sparks" to learn and contribute interesting links, pictures, and experiences. A rudimentary instant messaging system was rolled in, intended for people to "Huddle."

The advent of Google+ also brought about a video-calling medium that later turned into a chat app of its own right, the moribund Hangouts. Before it became a cancerous Frankenstein of SMS, phone calls, and live streaming, Hangouts was meant for impromptu gatherings or catching up with friends and co-workers.

Android Police played a role in bringing more than 7,800 people onto Google+ in the first few days of early access. The masses jumped in to experience another take on digital society which, even in 2011, had already matured into a pig's trough of commercial content, political trolling, and unvarnished angst. Many who joined hoped things would be better over the fence and that they could share their lives on the internet with the focus and attention that every disparate part of them so deserved.

Struggle

The tech behemoth had the ammunition to do damage with more than 500 million users by its third birthday. One way it could boast that number was through aggressive integrations with sister services. It made G+ registration compulsory when signing up for Gmail or Google Play Games.

Most notably in 2013, Google started requiring G+ accounts for those who wanted to post comments on videos uploaded to Google-owned YouTube, meaning real names had to be used. The anonymous legions of YouTube commenters complained about losing their right to post whatever they wanted — with or without vitriol — in the snug privacy of an alias.

YouTube comments became more of a joke to deal with than ever. There was less discrimination and verbal assault against video creators, sure, but many G+ opponents were simply copying and pasting ASCII art of some stick figure named "Bob," telling Google to bring back screennames.

Source: Know Your Meme

If this subject reeks of overtures from all the stories we've seen about online harassment and extremist radicalization, it may have been a shame that Google killed off this would-be salve in 2015. Then again, Google+ had killed off all of its goodwill, too.

Faded hopes didn't change Google+ as much as Google's own data gathering and profit calculations did. Ultimately, more people ended up falling back into the vortices of mainstream social media or sought more reclusive alternatives like Instagram and Snapchat.

Downfall

Eventually, it was this sandwich of spam, ads and overreach that took its toll on Google+. The platform had ended its use of invasive recruiting tactics while doing little else to retain its base. Those who have most recently been using the site spent 5 seconds or less at a time before drifting away.

Google actually admitted that tidbit last October in a leaked internal memo about a vulnerability that allowed third parties access to private information from users' friends and relatives without their consent. Although it was patched quickly, it was not disclosed in short order for fear of regulator scrutiny. In December, Google revealed that another vulnerability, with similar implications affecting more than 52 million accounts, had to be patched in the previous month. The incident sped up the company's clock for Google+'s shutdown. It announced its final timeline on January 30.

The company had arguably kept Google+ alive for much longer than it should've cared to. Much of that care should have gone instead to Hangouts: for all its faults, it became a convenient direct communications app that people with Gmail accounts came to rely on. It has gained second lives with spur-off apps for enterprise users and is expected to carry on a meaningful legacy long after its initial run.

Google+ will have to be remembered for what it used to be, the content it used to hold, the posts and comments that people might dig up in their Google Takeout archives one day — if they chose to keep them — and in at least one way, it will be fondly regarded. Account for all the other ways in which the network sought to stay afloat through different modes of attrition, though, and we are left with one overlong footnote in Google's biographic annuls.

Around 10AM PST today, Google+ for consumers officially went offline. The below screenshot is all any Google+ page now redirects to.

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https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/04/02/google-dies-today-by-the-hand-of-googles-apathy/

2019-04-02 17:25:00Z
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Road to Endgame: Iron Man 3 Revisited - /FILM

Iron Man 3 Revisited

(Welcome to Road to Endgame, where we revisit all 22 movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and ask, “How did we get here?” In this edition: Iron Man 3 brings a personal style to the MCU, even as it stumbles in the homestretch.)

After six films culminating in an unprecedented crossover, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had arrived. The Avengers set a new standard for summer blockbusters, though the concern going forward (for skeptics, and presumably for studio execs) was one of diminishing returns. Iron Man’s first solo outing after the battle of New York was tasked with bringing audiences back for more, while also establishing Marvel’s ability to tell new kinds of stories. In effect, it had to dramatize moving on from the world of The Avengers, while taking place entirely within it.

Simply put, the question Iron Man 3 had to answer was, “What comes next?” Would Marvel come close to rivaling the spectacle of its first team-up? Well, no. Then again, perhaps it didn’t have to. Iron Man 3 is nothing like The Avengers. In fact, it barely has anything in common with Iron Man and Iron Man 2, though what it does have — despite yet another vaguely defined character arc — is something only a handful of Marvel movies can boast.

It has a unique sense of identity.

Black to Basics

Outside the odd oblique tilt in Thor (and some self-contained, silent drama in The Incredible Hulk), Captain America: The First Avenger was arguably the only “Phase 1” film to sidestep the genre’s visual trappings. You can thank Joe Johnston of The Rocketeer for that, but not every Marvel movie has the luxury of a period-adventure sandbox.

Even The Avengers, which delivered some of the finest blockbuster spectacle this decade, didn’t make particularly great use of visual storytelling until its final battle. Its major third-act beats worked because they translated character into action; for instance, the fluid long-take where the Avengers fight in tandem for the first time. One of its only non-action scenes, where subtext was expressed visually — Captain America’s silent stroll through an unfamiliar world — was cut from the film.

For the most part, Marvel movies rely on straightforward dialogue to deliver emotional information. Iron Man 3 however, feels like the first entry in the series where the filmmakers were granted visual leeway. For once, the end result was not, as critic Matt Zoller Seitz puts it, a “movie-flavored product.”

Despite the studio notes it was forced to adhere to (like swapping its female villain for a male one to sell more toys)Iron Man 3 is a Shane Black film through-and-through. Its tonal consistency is entirely a function of its story. Black often sets his films around Christmas because he feels the holiday “represents a little stutter in the march of days, a hush in which we have a chance to assess and retrospect our lives.” When Christmas arrives for Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), he’s alone in a remote Tennessee locale, far flung from Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), the loved ones he put in danger.

Stark’s story began with him building armour to escape a remote cave. Here, for the first time in the series, he’s forced to find a way out of his isolation without the help of his suits. The stage is set for Stark to reflect on his decisions, and on his post-Avengers identity as it relates to the Iron Man persona. The film doesn’t quite stick the landing when it comes to these themes, but it finds an exciting momentum in the way it articulates them.

Black and cinematographer John Toll (The Thin Red Line, Cloud Atlas) depart from the bright palette of The Avengers to deliver a darker entry, both visually and emotionally. The entire film feels frigid even before Stark gets stuck in the snow. Cold lighting defines the texture of each space, and the muted tones of the productions design are interrupted only by deep-red explosions. The film is drab without being dour, and the characters constantly have to fight their way out of shadows.

In several scenes, the camera observes instead of empathizing. We see Pepper Potts’ meeting with Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) through Happy Hogan’s eyes, as he sits in the distance, relaying the information to Stark over the phone. Black, like Hogan, is people-watching, and the visual framing constantly prevents Stark from connecting with those around him. After Stark’s home is attacked, he’s forcefully ejected from his own narrative and launched thousands of miles away. Physically, and emotionally, he could not be more distant.

The fluid cinematography, combined with the fluidity of Black’s action and dialogue (the script was co-written by Drew Pearce) gives Iron Man 3 a distinctly “cinematic” texture — that is to say, one heavily reliant on non-dialogue audio and visuals to convey meaning — the kind few Marvel films can claim. Downey Jr. underscores the affair with his dry wit as usual, and his emotional separation becomes necessary so that Iron Man can (re)define himself in relation to other people.

Despite the distancing quality of the group scenes, the film extends beyond observational exercise at just the right moments. Its point-of-view shifts jarringly when Stark’s P.T.S.D. comes to the fore. The frame closes in on him with furor, until all we can see, or feel, is panic. Iron Man 3 is at its most potent when exploring the psychological effects of The Avengers on Stark, though unfortunately, there also comes a point when this vital story thread is haphazardly brushed aside.  

Nothing’s Been the Same Since New York

Tony Stark was once known as Marvel’s alcoholic superhero — Demon in a Bottle (1979) is his most instrumental story — and while the character’s alcoholism never finds its way into the films, Stark’s addict nature manifests in different forms. In Iron Man 3, his addiction is to building protective armour, and it’s exacerbated by trauma.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Andrea Letamendi argues that Stark’s symptoms could, in fact, be interpreted as Post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. He seems to display four key factors for diagnosis:

  • Avoidance of potential trauma triggers that lead to anxiety.
  • Hyper-arousal (he’s been awake for 72 hours when the film begins).
  • Vivid recollection via dreams and visions.
  • Functional impairment with regards to personal relationships.

More pertinently, Tony Stark is also more vulnerable to P.T.S.D. than the average human being, owing to what Letamendi calls “re-deployment.” Stark has been experiencing and re-experiencing trauma since the very first scene in Iron Man. His car was bombed, he had shrapnel lodged in his chest, he was kidnapped and tortured, and he spent the rest of the series embroiled in violent conflict. The Iron Man armour is as much an addiction as it is a symptom, not unlike P.T.S.D.-afflicted soldiers sleeping with guns by their bedside (Stark even calls to one of his suits in his sleep).

There are now 42 versions of the Iron Man armour, each created for different contingencies. The 42nd, which Stark operates remotely from his workspace, has even begun to replace him in his interactions with Potts. He’s frozen in the moment he flew through the wormhole above New York City, and his technology has consumed him,

The film dramatizes Stark’s symptoms with aplomb. The leering, distant camera is traded in for rapid zooms and uncomfortable close ups when his anxiety rears its head. The visual shifts feel inescapable; the lens becomes another wall closing in on Stark as we, the audience, poke and prod into his psyche, intruding on both his personal space and his most traumatic memories.

Stark’s experiences in The Avengers are collectively referred to as “New York.” This, coupled with his vengeful, self-destructive attitude towards vaguely Middle Eastern terrorist The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) calls to mind America’s own post-9/11 political tenor — albeit to no real end, despite the potential for exploring wartime paranoia.

However, Stark’s specific road to recovery makes Iron Man 3 a noteworthy sequel. In the context of Marvel’s shared-universe, his arc in this film involves letting go of his own origin story, and his journey to doing so means moving past the events of The Avengers. As much as Iron Man 3 is about defining Iron Man outside of his suits, it’s also about defining this larger narrative outside its most recognizable moments.

Separation

The film begins the process of separating Stark from the larger saga by introducing antagonists independent of previous Marvel films. The explosive Extremis Soldiers seem to simply exist, with no connections to Gamma Radiation, the Super Soldier Serum or Stark’s technology, something only Loki has had the distinction of thus far. Stark even searches for connections to prior entries, but it turns out the soldiers were created by Aldrich Killian, whose path to Extremis began decade before The Avengers. It’s as if Stark must move past the memory of his crossover and confront something new, just to make this movie happen.

Unfortunately, this meta-narrative of blazing a new path takes precedence over Stark’s mindset, the backbone of the film. His story is set up admirably, before being promptly forgotten.

Stark is in a bad way. He can’t sleep. His anxiety is triggered by a child’s drawing of the event — a crayon depiction of him flying towards the source of his trauma — leading to a public breakdown. He’s even triggered by Harley Keener (Ty Simpkins) simply mentioning New York, and it gets to a point where he has a mid-freeway episode for almost no reason at all.

With his suits out of commission, Stark attempts to combat his disorder by building weapons out of hardware scraps. Creating new tech to protect himself, a one-time survival mechanism in Iron Man, has become his crutch. Though while he finally sheds his stockpile by the end of the film, his journey to doing so feels disconnected. The freeway freak-out is the last time his anxiety or P.T.S.D. come up in the narrative.

What follows is a passable display of the film trying to figure out who Stark is outside of his iron cocoon. Fighting with only one Iron Man boot and glove makes for a hilarious action beat, but the film’s climactic scenes are muddled, especially in how they try to define Stark in relation to his new villain.

Like Thor before it, Iron Man 3 is yet another example of a Marvel film being “almost there” with its character arc.

A Clash of Ideologies, or Lack Thereof 

There’s much debate as to the movie version of The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), originally a racist caricature best left in the ’60s. The character being cast Indian rather than Chinese avoids outright whitewashing, though the form he takes instead of an orientalist stereotype is an intentional mixture of bastardized iconographies — see also, his Captain America tattoo which uses an Anarchist ‘A’.

Not unlike real-world terrorist outfits (ISIL, for one), the Mandarin lays claim to attacks that may not be his doing. He likens the recently-bombed Hollywood’s Chinese Theatre to the fortune cookie, an American-in-origin manipulation of Eastern imagery, repackaged and mass-marketed to the West. Fittingly, this ideological repackaging is exactly who the Mandarin is too.

As revealed late in the film, the Mandarin is actually a hodgepodge of western fears, a think-tank terrorist strung together by a clueless actor and his wealthy benefactor, Aldrich Killian. It’s a believable explanation for Killian’s unstable-to-the-point-of-explosion Extremis Soldiers, thus avoiding further inquiry into his experiments. This Mandarin borrows the symbol of The Ten Rings, the organization that kidnapped Tony Stark in Iron Man, and he fashions himself (or rather, is fashioned by Killian) as a grandiose, moralizing zealot, hell-bent on attacking the United States and its foreign interests.

For the first time, the Marvel Cinematic Universe comes this close to having something concrete to say about America. The “war on terror” being nebulous here, as it’s often framed the real world, allows Killian to sell biological weapons to both sides. These “both sides,” however, are never defined, or even alluded to in any way that would flesh out Killian and the world around him. Who Killian sells to matters, because his willingness to sell to them ultimately defines his conscience.

Credit where credit is due: compared to the other films in the series, Iron Man 3 features a marginally more critical take on America’s military industrial complex, certainly more than Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain Marvel, which were all made with military funding. And while Iron Man 3 cast several real-life Air Force recruits, there’s yet to be any evidence of Department of Defense involvement in the film.

Rather than avoiding the question of military ideology altogether, Iron Man 3 frames capitalist war profiteering through its sheer lack of ideology outside of money and power, something even U.S. political biopics have started to do. Though, the profit-motive being divorced from concerns of who, culturally or racially, is considered expendable, is its own relevant issue, something even the most military-centric Marvel films barely touch on.

Over the course of the film, U.S. militarism is sold and packaged through media narratives on multiple fronts. One on hand, there are televised portrayals of vaguely Middle Eastern threats, whose outlook is irrelevant so long as they seem scary to Americans. On the other, the film shows America’s limp, lip-service-only ideological response to those threats, as the nation simply paints over the heavily armed “War Machine” (Don Cheadle) in red, white & blue and calls him “The Iron Patriot” (War crimes often become acceptable when given focus-tested monikers).

While the film does little to portray the actual effects of this warmongering (Iron Patriot’s foreign interventions play out as dark comedy), it does portray the American response as both predictable and ill-considered. Killian takes advantage of this, conning the American President into invading Pakistan on two different occasions as the villain sets his traps elsewhere. While Iron Man and Iron Man 2 blame military industrialism solely on industry, Iron Man 3 at least draws a line straight to the U.S. Commander-In-Chief; the bare minimum, in a series so focused on war.

The downside to this empty ideology, as is the case in prior Marvel films, is that it fails to properly mirror the character-story being told. Aldrich Killian’s motivations are disconnected from Stark’s “self-created demons.” Killian has an unfeeling dedication to the business of war (as Stark once did), but his appearance in Stark’s flashback does little to entwine the two beyond happenstance. Where Killian would have fit perfectly in prior Iron Man entries, Iron Man 3 isn’t concerned with Stark’s place in the world of warfare.

Killian’s ruthlessness is on full display after the Mandarin reveal. He treats his soldiers as disposable, and he readily murders Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), the one person whose objectives are aligned with his. He doesn’t care about the people closest to him, which is what separates him from Stark on the surface. Stark’s arc, at least nominally, involves learning that Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts and the likes ought to be more important to him than his suits. This journey is externalized when Potts seemingly dies, followed by Stark’s far-too-late realization of just how good he had it.

However this dramatic beat, while functional as a self-contained moment, is entirely detached from Stark’s larger story, a narrative disconnect that’s only exacerbated by the specifics of the climax.

Fireworks in Lieu of Character 

Tony Stark shedding his armour at the end of the film makes sense on paper. The Iron Man concept has become an anchor, and Stark’s ultimate test ought to be whether or not he’s able function without it. Yet the film’s third act, an action-laden set-piece featured heavily in the trailers, sees him entirely reliant on his technology once more.

Summoning dozens of Iron Man suits is cool. Each one having a different design is cool, despite primarily existing to sell toys. The remote centralization of these unmanned drones is… well, it’s dangerous, but it looks cool, and the image of Stark jumping from suit to suit is cool as well. Ultimately though, empty suits fighting anonymous henchmen is still an empty spectacle, and it happens to be at odds with Stark’s journey in the film.

Stark’s reliance on his technology is never put to the test; if anything, the finale only supports his obsession. His addiction to his suits is as much a psychological phenomenon that defines his character, as it is a dramatic want or desire in the mechanics of the story. Destroying his outlet (or symptom) neither helps him confront the roots of his trauma, nor adequately pays off the conflict between both needing his suits, and needing to destroy them in order to exist completely. As fun as Iron Man 3 may be, discarding its P.T.S.D. thread this way is narratively disingenuous.

The Road Ahead

By this point in the franchise, Robert Downey Jr. had become Marvel’s not-so-secret weapon, and Iron Man 3 features some of the best dramatic work of his career. He’s allowed to dig deep into what makes Stark tick (and what prevents him from ticking), working in tandem with Black’s signature sarcasm-as-shield while balancing it with unshielded moments of vulnerability. Even when the spinning plates prove too many for the story, Downey Jr. balances them with finesse, which is part of why the film feels coherent despite dropping the ball thematically.

In the film’s closing narration, Stark utters two key phrases: “I’m a changed man” and “I am Iron Man.” The former mirrors a mal-formed character moment in Thor — the God of Thunder says, “I’ve changed,” though it isn’t clear how — while the latter is an intentional callback to the first Iron Man. These sentiments are distinctly at odds with one another, and their conflict is never reckoned with until later in the series.

Stark hasn’t given up being Iron Man, mind you; it would be unrealistic to expect him to, in a series so lucrative, even though it would’ve made for a stronger character arc; as video essayist Patrick Willems points out, Marvel’s “Phase 2” is where the series begins exhibiting the illusion of change. The removal of the reactor in Stark’s chest indicates that he no longer cocoons himself in armour, but the “change” in question doesn’t come from no longer needing his suits. Nothing is truly different about Tony Stark between the beginning and the end of the film; at some point, his disorder simply fades. His decision to destroy his suits seems to come from wanting to no longer need them, for Potts’ sake. However, the recognition that change can or ought to happen is vastly different from actual change. The latter is where stories end. The former is usually where they begin.

It’s an unsatisfying narrative conclusion to a story about the personal effects of trauma. But like its predecessors, Iron Man 3 also inadvertently sets into motion specific narrative faults that are eventually taken advantage of, in ways that alter the series’ approach to Tony Stark. If there’s one thing Marvel is good at, it’s taking flaws in narrative framing and retroactively weaving them into the text; the political short-sightedness of Iron Man and Iron Man 2 went on to become Stark’s political blinders; the inadequate character change in Iron Man 3 became a defining trait.

Iron Man 3 felt like the third time the reset button had been pushed on Tony Stark. His mistakes remained unconfronted, and his story merely had the appearance of progress. But by turning this dramatic shortcoming into an inter-textual narrative, the Marvel Cinematic Universe turned another weakness into a new foundation. From this point on, Stark’s backbone was his penchant for combating mistakes with even more mistakes, creating a long-running narrative between films like Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, and even Spider-Man: Homecoming, culminating in Stark’s ultimate failure in Avengers: Infinity War.

Marvel’s shared-universe has succeeded because of its long-term story. Not one of Infinity Stones and Quantum Realms and other cosmic plots, but one rooted in characters like Tony Stark. The MCU’s heroes are why the series works, despite its myriad of other flaws. If anything, Marvel’s sleight-of-hand makes those flaws seem like they were the plan all along.

***

Expanded from an article published April 10 2018.

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https://www.slashfilm.com/iron-man-3-revisited-road-to-endgame/

2019-04-02 15:00:49Z
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