Is the President a hero or a villain?
Tony’s faced opposition from politicians in the past, it looks as though that’s a trend that will continue in Iron Man 3.
After all, you don’t cast William Sadler to be President Fluffy.
“You elected me on a single platform. I will defend this country at all costs.”
What odds will you give us that those costs are ideologically and morally dodgy?
How significant will Guy Pearce be?
So far in all the trailers, The Mandarin has been posited as the main villain, with Pearce’s Adrian Killian not worthy of so much as a line of dialogue.
He gets more to do in trailer 2 – making us wonder if he’ll be the Henri Ducard to The Mandarin’s Ra’s al Ghul; the real brains behind the operation
Is this Extremis in action?
Tony’s used remote control armour before of course – one of our favourite scenes in Avengers Assemble involved him plummeting out of a window, calling his armour to him via some handy wrist-bands.
So, at first glance this looks like it could be a similar scene.
But the comics book geeks out there will – spoiler alert – be wondering if Tony is controlling this suit /with his mind/
Is this Extremis Guy Pearce?
It’s a blink and you’ll miss it shot, but that blonde hair is fairly distinctive – this looks like Killian getting in on the action, scrapping with Iron Man with his top off.
But is he the final villain, or just a henchman?
The setting of this scrap certainly seems to take place in the third-act, based on some clues we’ll get to in a bit.
How big will the Extremis programme be?
In the comics, the Extremis programme is yet another attempt by nefarious science-types to replicate the Super Serum that created Captain America.
It looks like a similar plot is afoot here – with loads of soldier-type chaps strapped into weird metal chairs.
Note that Pepper Potts is seen in a similar device later in the trailer – will she be injected?
If so, we insist that she picks someone named Barry Salt to be her sidekick.
Are we going to see a lot of Tony out of suit?
The original Iron Man has an element of profound genius (well, it has several, but this is the most unsung).
Those shots of Tony inside the suit, looking at his armour’s HUD, are brilliant. They completely solve one of the biggest problems in superhero cinema. Namely: you pay millions to have an identifiable lead, only to hide his face behind a mask.
The Spider-Man movies got around the problem by having Tobey McGarfield’s mask fall off at every possible opportunity.
So it’s interesting to see that Iron Man 3 appears to feature a lot of action sequences involving an out-of-suit Tony. Though, as the trailer goes on to reveal, we’re not exactly going to be left wanting when it comes to suit action in Iron Man 3.
Whys Pepper Potts in her bra?
At first glance, this particular shot could be taken to be a bit gratuitous. However, we think it’s a massive clue to what could be one of the coolest elements in Iron Man 3.
SPOILERS. In the comics, Pepper Potts has her own Iron suit, known as Rescue. We’re pretty sure this shot means we’re going to be seeing Potts suit up.
And if you’re willing to put up with a bit of wild speculation, we’re going to guess that the necklace Tony’s putting around Pepper’s neck in that early shot from the trailer is the remote device that activates it.
Seriously if this happens, and we get an in-suit shot of Paltrow reading Rescue’s HUD display, we’re probably going to explode with geek joy.
The petition for Potts to join The Avengers starts here.
How many suits are we going to see?
By the time the credits rolled on Iron Man 2, we’d seen Tony go through seven incarnations of his suit.
When the first footage from Iron Man 3 was revealed at Comic-Con, it was clear that Stark had been a busy boy in the break between films – he’d leapt ahead to his 47th version of the suit.
What we didn’t realise was that we would see all 40 in-between versions in action.
We’re totally prepared to forgive the fact that this is clearly footage from the third-act climax (we hate it when that stuff goes into the trailer) purely on the basis that it’s ridiculously exciting.
And it looks like the same location as that briefly glimpsed fight between Iron Man and Extremis Killian – we’re betting he’s an obstacle between Tony and The Mandarin.
Is this The Hulkbuster?
One of Stark's coolest variant suits is The Hulkbuster, created to allow Stark to restrain Hulk should he ever become a threat (comic-book fans will know that plan doesn’t exactly go well).
When concept art for an Iron Man 3 version recently leaked, we figured it had to be fake – there was no way The Hulkbuster would be in Iron Man 3 . Avengers 2 , maybe. But Iron Man 3 ? How much time does Tony have on his hands?
Here, it’s not only confirmed, but it’s in action. We can’t wait to see what it can do.
