Actually, I count 6 Iron Men, but hey, whatever.
[ Flashback to the 90s. Robert Downy Jr. is a young, rich prick hopped up on booze and drugs at a party. Incidentally, he’s also portraying “Tony Stark.” ]
Robert Downy Jr: Yo, brick of cocaine, right here!
Guy Pierce [ dressed as every protagonist from Revenge of the Nerds simultaneously whilst talking like Sid the Sloth ]: Essccckushe me, Mr. Junior sir, but would you be interested in joining my new think tank, Plot Foreshadowing Incorporated?
Downy Jr: Nice nerd make-up, Guy. You managed to look worse than when you were in that shitty old-guy make-up in Prometheus. Get lost, dork. [ Gives Guy an atomic wedgie. ]
Pierce: That does it. This minor insult from a visibly inebriated and universally acknowledged self-centered prick is all the motivation I need to dedicate my life to… eeeeevil. I shall become… [ flips through his collection of Iron Man comics to see what villain hasn’t shown up onscreen yet. ]… the Mandarin!
Downy Jr: Whatever, geek. How about you, sexy lady… wanna do a math problem with me? I’ll subtract the clothes and divide the legs and…
Rebecca Hall: I beg your pardon, sir. I am a proper English lady who is also an extremely talented molecular biologist. I have just invented a regenerative treatment called Extremelyforbodis, but it is plagued with an instability I thought that together we might be able to…
Downy Jr: Waitasec! You were Christian Bale’s wife in The Prestige, which essentially means you banged Batman. You wanna sample a little of the Marvel universe now, baby?
Hall: [ Swoon. ]
[ Robert and Rebecca proceed to… ahem… “talk” while the flacid little plant Rebecca brought in suddenly grows turgid and throbbing and erect before exploding in a wet goo. ]
Federico Fellini: God, I sure hope that’s a foreshadowing plot point, because otherwise that’s just… gross.
[ Flash forward twenty years. Guy Pierce has become buff and successful and decides to visit Gweneth Paltrow. ]
Guy Pierce: I’m back to give Robert Downy Jr a second chance to join my think tank. Here, let me show you a giant holographic projection of the effects of this little blue pill on my throbbing organ. If we stimulate it, we can make it erupt in frothy white activity.
Gweneth Paltrow: Oh myyy…
[ Guy puts up a holographic projection of his brain. ]
Paltrow: Oh.
For all things, there is an appropriate Futurama Quote.
Pierce: I’m calling it my raging brainer.
Fellini: I’m calling it quits.
[ Meanwhile at Robert Downy Jr’s home, which is apparently back in California and not the giant Stark Tower that played a crucial role in the previous movie… ]
Robert Downy Jr: I’m racked with post-traumatic-stress syndrome brought on by the events of the Avengers movie. I can’t even leave the house.
[ Suddenly Don Cheadle bursts in! ]
Don Cheadle: Dammit Robert! As your dearest, closest, bestest, and interchangeably black friend, I am concerned for you. Ben Kingsley is calling himself the Mandarin now. He’s apparently a TV terrorist who has been blowing up stuff across the United States. Isn’t stopping terrorists kinda your thing in Iron Man movies?
Downy Jr: Meh.
Cheadle: Why are you freaked out by The Avengers? That movie’s like the third highest-grossing movie of all time.
Downy Jr: Have you seen it? The whole last hour is indistinguishable from Transformers 3. By extension, I’m almost indistinguishable from Michael Bay. [
Shudders uncontrollably and vomits. ]
Cheadle: I can see your point. You need a hobby.
Downy Jr: Oh, I’ve got one. I’ve been building a whole fleet of specialized Iron Man suits. This one shoots electricity, that one shoots airs, that one throws boulders, that one is equipped with giant scissors…
I would play the hell out of this game. Get on it, NES.
Cheadle: Wait… Is this Iron Man or Mega Man?
Downy Jr: Sorry Don. Someone already beat you to that joke.
[ Suddenly Gweneth Paltrow bursts in! ]
Gweneth Paltrow: Dammit, Robert! As your token love interest, I love you, but we’re already already a third the way into this movie and you haven’t even left the house! Plus, Guy Pierce may be evil.
Downy Jr: Meh.
[ Suddenly Jon Favreau bursts in! ]
Jon Favreau: Dammit, Robert! As your former bodyguard, I should tell you that Guy Pierce’s henchmen have strange mysterious regenerating powers and, when overstimulated, become turgid and explody. I know this because I was in an explosion and suffered massive bodily trauma. [ Slumps over in bloody agony. ]
Downy Jr: Meh.
Favreau: Looks like I picked a bad day to stop directing Iron Man movies. [ Dies. ]
[ Suddenly Rebecca Hall bursts in! ]
Rebecca Hall: Dammit, Robert! I’m not sure if you’re connecting the conveniently laid out dots in the plot so far, but I think that Ben Kingsley and Guy Pierce are working together using my unstable regenerative breakthrough.
Downy Jr: Meh.
Hall: Also, if you stay around the house, you’ll have to deal with your ex-one-night-stand and your current girlfriend nagging at you simultaneously.
Downy Jr: Iron Man is back in action! Come and get me, Guy Pierce.
Guy Pierce: Okay.
[ Guy sends a fleet of gunships to blast the living shit out of Robert’s house. Robert narrowly escapes in an Iron man suit that conveniently flies him to Tennessee because the plot requires it. ]
Downy Jr: I’m alone and presumed dead in a hillbilly backwood. Let’s see… I’ve had a love interest… a male sidekick… a female sidekick… and a whole league of sidekicks… now what?
Ty Simpkins: How about a precocious kid sidekick?
Downy Jr: Do you have both a conveniently located ramshackle shed in which I can rebuild my suit and a set of legal guardians who won’t show up for at least the next 72 hours to check up on you in any way?
Simpkins: [Precociously] Sure do!
Downy Jr: I shall call you “Iron Manchild.”
Simpkins: Well, at least it’s better than “Iron Patriot.”
Still, you must admit he LOOKS FAB-U-LOUS!
Stephanie Szostak: Not so fast! I’m one of Guy Pierce’s regenerative super-soldiers, and I’m here to kill you!
Downy Jr: You’re playing “Ellen Brandt,” right? She’s only a supporting character in the Marvel Universe, right?
Szostak: Er… that’s right. Why does that matter?
Downy Jr: Oh, nothing. [ Kills her with his bare hands and some conveniently located kitchen tools. ]
Simpkins: [Precociously] You just killed one of the super-soldiers with your bare hands. Won’t that make you facing a super-soldier whilst armed with, like, a hundred different Iron Man suits during the movie’s finale completely without tension?
Downy Jr: Shut up, kid.
[ Robert finds the Mandarin’s lair. ]
Ben Kingsley: Actually, I’m not the Mandarin. I just play one on TV. Now, if we’re done here, I’m needed on the set of Ender’s Game, where I’m apparently playing Queequeg.
Downy Jr: Quelle surprise!
That’s pretty much the only “Moby Dick” quote I can come up with.
Guy Pierce: Seems like you’ve found me. Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy.
Downy Jr.: This is the Marvel universe, dumbass.
Pierce: For that insult, I will kill Rebecca Hall, infect Gweneth Paltrow with my super-solider serum, and steal Don Cheadle’s Iron Man suit, and leave you two in my dungeon while I go off and kill the president with it.
Downy Jr: Let me get this straight. You’re going to kill off a character whose only been in, what, 2 scenes and to whom no one in the audience has any connection? Then you’re going to give my girlfriend precisely the super powers she needs in order to kill you? Then you’re lock me, a certified genius weapons builder and Iron Man pilot, unsupervised with my very best friend, a trained military warrior and Iron Man pilot?
Pierce: Yes. What could go wrong?
Downy Jr: What was the point of that “big brain” sequence again?
[ Guy leaves, and uses a remote-controlled CGI Iron Man suit to steal the President off Air Force One. He is thwarted when Robert uses a different remote controlled CGI Iron Man suit to save the remaining passengers. Because nothing says “action sequence” like having the participants being two levels removed from the actual action.]
Not “Iron Man 2” on FX again…
Pierce: Now it’s time to kill the President because EVIL. Also, I must do it on abandoned oil platform because ACTION MOVIE.
Downy Jr: Not so fast. Me and my entire army of now completely autonomous Iron Man suits will defeat you. In fact, since they’re now completely autonomous, I can actually just sit down here on this couch and relax for the next thirty minutes or so. Want some popcorn, Don?
Don Cheadle: Sure.
I dig the Village People’s new, modern look.
[ They munch popcorn as Guy Pierce’s army is destroyed one-by-one by Iron Man suits, after which Guy Pierce destroys the Iron Man suits one-by-one. Also, he throws Gweneth Paltrow into a pit of fire. ]
Downy Jr: Great. You’ve thrown my now invincible and super-powered girlfriend into certain death. Don’t you know what happens when you do that in Marvel movies? [ Shows Guy Pierce the end of X-Men 2 and all of X-Men 3. ]
Pierce: Oh God, no.
[ Suddenly Gweneth Paltrow emerges from the flames as either the Phoenix or, even worse, Brett Ratner. In either case, she kills the shit out of Guy Pierce. ]
Downy Jr: Thank God you’re alive! To properly express my gratitude, let me remove explode all my Iron Man suits, representing all the time I spent bent up in PTSD unable to express my love for you!
Gweneth Paltrow: Oh myyy…
Downy Jr: Also, I’ll remove your super powers and my arc reactor chest thingie, so that we can be just two ordinary, puny, unexceptional people again.
Paltrow: Oh.
Cheadle: Wait… did you just blow up my suit too? [ Realizes he’s now suddenly unemployed. ] Well, shit.
THE END.
Mark Ruffalo: Wait, I get a cameo at the end, but no actual action in the movie? Hulk SMASH!
