Marvel's Phase 2 begins strong

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2013)

So now that "The Avengers" is all taken care off, how does The Invincible Iron Man, Tony Stark, handle life afterwards
After the Battle of New York in "The Avengers", Tony Stark has been traumatized, since out of the six members, he was the one who nearly sacrificed his life to save the city. He's been spending his whole time building suits, giving him a total of forty-two Iron Man suits. As this is going this mysterious figure called The Mandarin, is sending terrorist threats to the United States and is launching attacks in several places around the country. This leads to an attack on Tony's Malibu mansion and he is forced to rely on being Tony Stark, and not Tony in the Iron Man suit, as he comes up with a way to combat the Mandarin and these mysterious forces that have been injected with this virus called Extremis.
So there is a lot that I like about the movie. Robert Downey Jr. is still a great Tony Stark, it's got some really great writing from writer/director Shane Black. There are many great moments of funny dialogue and given that it works with the slightly darker tone is a plus. The acting from the other cast members was good. Gwyneth Paltrow gets to do more in this movie then in the past two movies that really satisfied me. We get to see Rhodey (Don Cheadle) be a bad ass in and out of the Iron Patriot armor. Guy Pearce is someone that I hated, not in the sense that he was bad, it's just he made Aldrich Killian absolutely evil, which made me root for Tony even more. Sir Ben Kingsley is good as The Mandarin even though there is something they do with his character that I really hated. One actress that I want to briefly mention that I liked was Rebecca Hall as Maya Hansen. I want to bring her up because "Extremis" was the only Iron Man comic I've read and she was everything I imagined Maya to be in that story. Speaking of which, the Extremis soldiers were a perfect translation from the page to the screen. There are also some spectacular action set pieces, that put me on the edge of my seat, got me tense and excited at the same time.
Now there are two problems that I have with the movie. One is more of a nitpick and the other is a twist in the movie that I hated and I'm sure are going to upset a lot of comic fans. The nitpick is that the end credits make it feel like the true end to the Iron Man Trilogy, and being that this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tony Stark will indeed return. The one thing that I hated about this movie involved the Mandarin.
(THIS IS WHERE WE GET INTO SPOILER TERRITORY, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED)
The Mandarin was being built up throughout the movie and in the movie you find out that he's just an actor doing these terror videos as the leader of the Ten Rings (the organization that kidnapped Tony Stark in Iron Man). You find out that Killian is the true Mandarin, and being a Marvel fan that was kind of hard for me to swallow. However as the movie kept going and especially when we get to that intense scene involving Air Force One, I started to be more forgiving.
Despite that problem, I really enjoyed this movie, it's currently my least favorite of the three Iron Man movies (and I know that's unpopular to say since many people hate Iron Man 2), but now that I know of that twist, I might enjoy it better the second time. It's the most emotionally powerful of the three, it's really funny, with more surprises here and there that I enjoyed and not only is it a great way to start off blockbuster season, but a great way to start up Phase 2.