The newly released Iron Man 3, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, starts off with a flashback to New Years Eve 1999. Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) and fellow scientist Maya Hanseen, inventor of a treatment that can cure crippling injuries called Extrimis and because of this disabled scientist Aldrich Killian offers them a place at his company at Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) but Stark refuses the offer ad humiliating Aldrich in the process. Then in to the present day Stark is a creator of many high tech and near indestructible Iron Man suits however it causes a bit of friction with his wife Pepper Potts (Paltrow). A group of terrorists called Mandarin have recently done a lot of attacks around America. One of the attacks seriously injures Stark’s chief security therefore he calls out the Mandarin group and threatens them over a televised interview and giving him details of where to find him. This puts him and his wife in danger as the Mandarin now knows where he lives. Hanseen then comes to his house to warn him of incoming attacks from the Mandarin. Whilst this conversation is on-going, Mandarin attack Stark’s and Potts’ house. All three survive the attacks and with the help of a computer Stark finds out that a main member of Mandarin is based in Tennessee so Stark flies over to find him. However his suit runs out of power and he crashes and cannot return to California and because of the state of his house majority of the world thinks he is dead. Whilst trying to fix his suit in Tennessee he starts talking to a ten year old boy called Harley who is in awe of him and can’t believe he is alive. Harley then starts talking about the history of the town and mentions an attack on the area by the Mandarin group. They both go and discover where the attack had taken place and realised five soldiers were killed in the attack and discover one of them must have triggered the attack. He then works out that one of the soldiers didn’t get killed and thinks he might be part of the Mandarin and speaks to local people in the area to see where he might find him. He realises that the soldier’s deaths were cover ups for Extrimis’ flaws of the terrorist attack killing and not saving people. Stark then realises what he is in for when two Mandarin agents attack him in a local. With Harley’s help Stark tracks Mandarin and realises they’re in Miami. Stark then improves his weapons so he can finish off the Mandarin. During extra research he works out the Mandarin is a creation by Killian and was a revenge act from that New Years Eve party back in 1999. Stark discovers that Killian’s next plan is to attack and kidnap the president of America whilst on Air Force One. Stark manages to save majority of the passengers on board but doesn’t manage to save the President as Killian still manages to kidnap him and destroys Air Force One in the process. They manage to track Killian down to a damaged oil tanker where Killian plans to kill the President live on television. Stark then goes to find Potts and a friend called James Rhodes who have both been captured by the Mandarin. Stark then calls all his Iron Man suits, he and Rhodes control all the suits to try and kill Killian. Rhodes then saves the President and takes him to safety. Stark then realises Potts is held by the Mandarin on an oil rig which then collapses around them and thinks Potts falls to her death. Stark then finds Killian and puts him in an Iron Man suit which self destructs but fails to kill him. Potts’ extremis powers enable her to survive and ends up killing Killian. To thank Potts for her part in taking out The Mandarin he devotes his love for her by destroying every single one of his Iron Man suits. With the Extrimis’ help Stark undergoes surgery to remove bits of scrap metal near his heart from the Iron Man suits. The surgeons discover his iron arc chest plate that they cannot remove. Emphasising the fact he will always be Iron Man.

Iron Man 3 has multiple genres of Action, Sci Fi and Thriller. This gives it a wide range of a target audience of mainly all males over 16 as males over this age tend to have interest in at least one of the mentioned genres. It was realised in the cinemas on 25th April 2013 and has already generated over $1 billion in the box office (as of May 19th 2013) and became the 4th fastest film in history to reach that milestone and became the 6th film to be distributed by Disney to reach the $1 billion mark and was the second highest grossing film to be distributed by Disney. It also became the fourth highest grossing comic book/marvel film. After its first weekend it already made more than the previous two Iron Man films. A new director was used for the third movie. The first two films were directed by John Favreu but in the third film it was directed by Shane Black. However Kevin Feige has produced all three films but the first film was also produced by Avi Arad.

Many reasons why this film made more money than the other two Iron Man films is because there was a lot more advertising and marketing used for the third film. There was a slightly bigger budget for this film so they could spend more on advertising. The main reason this film made more money was because of the popularity and rise in social networking sites. If film companies or actors or people involved in the film can spread the word on Twitter and Facebook to nearly 1 billion people around the world. When the first two films were out there wasn’t anywhere near that many people on social networking sites. In the same way the increase in popularity of YouTube has helped greatly because as of 22nd May the trailer for Iron Man 3 has 18 and a half million views on YouTube (That’s more than people that live in Holland, Chile and Portugal.) Due to a bigger budget more adverts on tv could be used at peak television times on popular channels and programmes therefore more people will see the trailer and more people will want to watch the film. This also means they could put the trailer in the cinemas before some of the biggest blockbusters. Posters were also placed on a lot of billboards all over the world in some of the busiest cities in the world where millions of people walk through everyday. If every person who walks through a city centre tells two people about the film after seeing the poster on a billboard there could be around 10 million people aware of the film after one day of advertising.

A lot of research needs to be done in order for a film to be more successful. The better and more thorough the research is the better quality of film will be made. The first techniques used would be primary and secondary research. Primary research is when you collect information yourself using questionnaires, focus groups and interviews. This is helpful because then you know what content to put in the film that the public will like and have an interest in. Secondary research is when you collect information on the internet, in newspapers, magazines etc. In Iron Man 3 for example, the creators would’ve gone online and found out what went well and what didn’t in the previous two Iron Man films. The next set of research film companies and producers would do is qualitative and quantitative research, which is similar to primary research. This type of research would usually happen after an intimate screening of an audience of around 100 people of their target audience would watch the film before it comes out in the cinema and they give their opinion on what they liked and didn’t like and what they didn’t like. That part is the quantitative research where they collect people’s opinions on what they would change or what they think should be kept in the film. The qualitative part of it is when they collect it all and makes stats and numbers out of it. For example if you asked ‘What do you think of the Iron Man suit?’ they would then say 60% of people

said… 30% of people said… and 10% of people said… If all this research is done properly then the film will be a huge success.

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