Iron Man 3

Tonight, my heart beat a million miles a minute.  Tonight I was terrified.  Tonight I saw a man hiding behind his weapons have the courage to rid himself of them for the sake of someone he dearly loved. 

Tonight, I saw Iron Man 3.

When most people walk away from a amovie, they say "oh, that was awesome!"  "So cool!"  "I loved when he/she..."  These are all fine and good things to say.

But whether it is a blessing or a curse, when I walk away from a movie, because of how God decided to make me, my mind churns for hours, analyzing every step of character development, the predictive plot formula (with unpredictable twists and turns...sort of)...I can't stop thinking. 

Iron Man 1 was great.  Iron Man 2 was not my favorite, as a writer, as the plot lacked depth and the character development was next to nothing.

But this one.  This one amazed me. 

This one was terrifying.  The first movie was scary because there were terrorists, and it was set in Afghanistan.  A place close to the heart of many people's terror at the time.

The second movie was surreal.  It was harder to imagine an evil character harnessing that magnitude of electricity and using it for such evil purposes.  It was scary, but it was fantastical. 

This one was even scarier.  Terrorist tapes from "The Mandarin" at least resembled those from Bin Laden and Hussein.  Iron Man, the country's "savior" suffered from PTSD.  Every good hero must have a flaw, and his showed up in mighty ways in this film.  

Being a very empathetic and compassionate person, I ached for the compassionate people in the movie, people like Pepper and Tony's former love interest, who had a desire to help.  But their praiseworthy desires were twisted and used for evil by people who sought revenge and power. 

We are aware of terrorists committing the horrible acts of self-detonation, but in this movie, it was taken to a whole new level.  People, brave soldiers who had suffered terrible injuries as a result of war, were ready to be transformed and restored, and instead, they were turned into evil.  Many burning to death, self-detonating, live, corrupted explosions.  Brokenness was turned into sheer evil.  But how do you separate the human soul inside from the monster without?

3/4 of the way through the movie, my heart reached a new turbo speed as my mind flashed back to last summer's Aurora shooting.  I became hyper-vigilant, probing every area of the movie theater, hoping, praying, slinking down in my seat, wishing the terrible act would not be repeated.  And then I thought, "why am I worrying?  There's someone who is even more powerful than Iron  Man who is in this very theater. Right now.  And He has every robot, every evil character, under his mighty hand."  I was further calmed afterwards when a friend mentioned he had seen police officers around with weapons, circulating throughout the night with eyes wide open to any suspicious activity.

At the end of the movie, Tony destroys every suit he has made, as a representation of his respect and love for Pepper, as he destroys every "idol" he was placing at a value of worth higher than her.  He even throws "his heart" into the very heart of the sea.  It is how he must part with his past self, and begin life anew with his present and future self, ready to be a man again, but also knowing that he, his character and his heart, were what made Iron Man in the first place.