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How Iron Man 3 Uses Christmas to Drive Emotion
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Mar 31, 2025
The debate over whether or not a film is a "Christmas Movie" has gone on for years. Movies like Die Hard, Gremlins, Batman Returns, Home Alone, and Iron Man 3 all take place during the Holiday of Christmas, but is that enough to qualify it as a Christmas Movie? Iron Man 3 director Shane Black has a habit of setting his stories around Christmas for a very specific reason. But that beg's the question, Is Iron Man 3 a Christmas Movie?
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Merry Christmas, buddy
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In Iron Man 3, Tony Stark goes head to head with a despotic madman known only as the Mandarin
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Film sees Tony stripped of his access to his massive wealth, copious technological advancements
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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 the heart of gold
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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
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Which creates a separate question. Is Iron Man 3 a Christmas movie
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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
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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
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It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and White Christmas are all delightful entries
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into cinematic canon that is Christmas movies. However, for many films, Christmas fulfills a much different, often functional, purpose
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which is how we get to Iron Man 3. So when is a Christmas movie not a Christmas movie
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Well, first, let's define what a Christmas movie might actually be. They're usually films that are about the holiday of Christmas in some way or another
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either thematically or literally. It's linked to the holiday, the iconography of the holiday, and its themes directly through
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the narrative. Basically, if you were to change the holiday to anything other than Christmas, the movie
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shouldn't work. If a film can have the word Christmas deleted from its story and still work without major
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rewriting, then it's probably not a Christmas movie. To illustrate this, let's use Elf
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Despite most of its runtime not taking place on the literal day of Christmas, its main character
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is an elf, which is obviously linked to Old State Nick and the film happens
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during the holiday season but more importantly, it takes the style and function of the Rankin holiday specials and infuses it into the live action world It about family learning to accept people for who they are and embracing the childlike wonder that lives within all of us It linked to Christmas both on a thematic and literal level
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Merry Christmas! On the inverse end of the spectrum, this is the argument that happens about Die Hard a lot
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Die Hard takes place during the Christmas season, but it's not hyper-focused on the thematic or literal realities of Christmas
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Merry Christmas! Which to some makes it, well, not a Christmas movie
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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
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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
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Silent Night. Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and The Long Kiss Goodnight
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all utilize Christmas as a plot mechanic. They're not Christmas movies per se
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but they're movies that use Christmas to emphasize the loneliness, desperation, or isolation of its characters during that time of year
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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He wanted to interrogate the idea of what makes Iron Man Iron Man
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Is it the suit or the person inside the suit? Tony Stark is always someone who struggled with balance
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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
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He sold multiple original spec scripts for millions of dollars in the 80s and 90s
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And guess what? It all came tumbling down, just like Stark's life eventually would
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In Iron Man 3, Black uses Christmas to emphasize how isolated and alone Tony really is
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After his home is attacked by the Mandarin, Tony goes on the run with only one suit
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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
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from the fallout of his previous encounters at the Battle of New York, as we saw in Avengers 1
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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
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And you want to guess how Christmas plays into the story? You probably got it. It amplifies the loneliness and complicates his relationships
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But does the fact that this is happening during the holiday season make the film a Christmas movie
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Again, Christmas for many people is the one day of the year they're forced to come to terms with their position in life
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or their connections to the world around them in a very tangible, emotional way, whether good or bad
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For Shane Black's films, the Christmas element comes into play predominantly in the second act
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which is when, in the traditional three-act structure, everything seems like it can't get worse
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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
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I tend to think also that it just informs as a backdrop
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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
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It was never developed as a Christmas movie. It was released May 3rd, 2013
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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
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And obviously, we get the answer we all want as the film ends with him uttering his trademark catchphrase
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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
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Gremlins Batman Returns Edward Scissorhands Star Trek Generations and Trading Places all use Christmas as a plot mechanic to emotionally heighten or manipulate their protagonist into thinking about their past actions and questioning if they made the right choices
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Star Trek Generations literally has a scene where Picard goes into a parallel dream world
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and meets a bouncing brood of children he never had and the wife he never made time to meet
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and debates staying there with his fictional family as they celebrate Christmas together for all eternity
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Christmas in Generations is a symbol. It's a siren's call to an easier, pain-free existence
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This sequence in the film might be the pitch-perfect example of what's being discussed right here
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It's Christmas purely as a mechanic, a narrative device. It exists within the framework purely to push the protagonist to make a choice
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That's what writing is, after all. It's putting characters in situations where they have to make tough decisions
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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
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It's been said that film is an engine that generates empathy, and using Christmas as a shortcut to generate the most empathy
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both with the audience and the characters, is in a lot of ways kind of brilliant
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So is Iron Man 3 a Christmas film? I think you can relatively definitively state no, it's not
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But it's important to learn from this idea that Shane Black implements so frequently
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When it comes to writing in particular, anything and everything can be used to your advantage
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Anything that pushes your characters, anything that puts the people that you're creating
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in a position they don't want to be in, or maybe aren't comfortable in, is a good thing
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Whether that's Christmas, or Valentine's Day, or even New Year's Eve, but it's always
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worth keeping in mind that your setting, your time and place, truly matter beyond what year
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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
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in the story of these characters, which is why some of the best films are so great at
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building their world, or at least the environment around the people we're supposed to care about
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It doesn't mean set everything you do against Christmas. It just means care about what exactly is
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going on around the people you're creating
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