How would you rank the other two Iron Man films, for sake of comparison?
Iron Man 3 > Iron Man > Iron Man 2
Tyler Durden is my bitch.
"Exactly everything you asked for"
Yeah, except for The Mandarin. Man, wouldn't that have been awesome?
But then, How exactly would you handle something that could easily be misconstrued as a racist stereotype? The Mandarin was basically Marvel's idea of a Yellow Peril villain, after all - to the point they turned the guy green in one of the old animated shows. Marvel's already adjusted and altered the villains to the point where 'The Mandarin' in the film made perfect sense. As Killian points out, IM 3's Mandarin is a deliberate Bin Laden expy, someone to draw the attention to him and away from the actual plot, and it makes sense - how much time was spent searching for Bin Laden, after all, and has his death actually rendered Al Qaeda inactive? In that sense, I think they actually just did something pretty brave with the character, and frankly it's a lot smarter than the trailers made the character out to be. At this point, I'm kind-of sick and tired of the 'villain who is here to teach the hero a lesson' kind of archetype; We've seen it with Ledger's Joker and hundreds of others - these villains who know the way the world works and seek to impart their twisted world view upon the hero. Here, the Mandarin is riffing on that, whilst Killian, the actual bad guy, is getting on with his actually relatively straightforward plot. And frankly, I think it was better to set up the possibility of a continuing Advanced Ideas and Mechanics threat than to have the Mandarin just appear as a huge threat and then be done with in one movie. So.. Thumbs up, here. I thought it was a smart approach to what could have been a very very very dumb character.
I thought it was good if only for shaking up the standard comic book to movie conversion formula (take famous comic book enemy, throw him at famous superhero, hero kills enemy, rinse wash repeat).
"More Iron Man Suits? Done! "
Was anyone asking for that except Marvel's Toy Manufacturers? I felt it really hard to feel any sort of suspense at the climax of the film when the hero basically had no need to be there at all, and it was just empty suits of metal that were getting bashed around.
Apart from loving how it ends Tony Stark's character, I also hope it's the end of the franchise because from now on I'd really have to be asking myself why he's needlessly putting his life at risk when he can potentially build 1000 suits to do his fighting instead
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Exactly everything you asked for (NO SPOILERS)
The title of the review says it all; not much to add. What were audiences expecting from this?
More action? Done!
More Iron Man Suits? Done!
More characters? Done!
A better story? Done!
HSQ-loaded visuals that put both Avengers and TDKR to shame? Done!
A fitting denouement for Iron Man, while leaving an open-ended conclusion for the character's future participation in Marvel Cinematic Universe movies? Done!
What I most loved about it is that the film just dives in; no long-drawn-out build up, no wasting twenty minutes with an origin story for the villain. Right off the bat, we're thrown into the middle of it - the bad-guy terrorist (Mandarin) is already active, Tony is suffering anxiety attacks as a result of the events in Avengers (which are simply referred to as "New York"), he and Pepper are having problems as a couple, and his obsession with the suits is driving him cuckoo-bonkers. It all just snowballs from there, in a stunning spectacle mixed with some clever storytelling, and, as is signature for the Marvel movies, some hilariously silly pitfalls.
As I mentioned, the HSQ-level is through the roof, which is to be expected. There's this one scene with a plane crash where... well, you'll see.
Overall 8.9/10 and awesome.