Middling Tripe

Rating: 4/10 (4 May 2013)

I'm going to ignore the fact that they completely (and I do mean completely) destroyed the Mandarin as a villain. If you're so scared of the Chinese banning your movies, then just don't use the character. There are others.
I digress. This movie started out very well. A nice mix of action, humor, and suspense to keep the audience engaged and entertained. If it had ended at 90 minutes, I would have wanted to see more. Then I suppose, they could have actually spent another 90 minutes developing the final motivations for any of the main characters, because I couldn't figure anything out for the last hour.
What was Killian's motivation? Was it to better Stark, who wronged him that one night (although he seemed to be doing JUST FINE after the fact, so he really should have thanked him as he did...), was it to run the country? Well kinda, except he never clearly expressed any desire to run anything. Was it for access to more money for research? Well he had all the military contracts he wanted, so it didn't seem like he was short. WELL HE'S JUST THE BAD GUY GO ACCEPT IT.
But wait - he has an army of henchmen - many former military wounded. They were very loyal. Why? Cause he healed them right? But that wasn't explained - and then they kill one of their own - for what exactly? a smokescreen? But these are army guys - they don't just kill their own unless there's a damn good reason. I'm supposed to believe that former soldiers get their arms back and suddenly they forget their sworn oath of duty? Really? Then there's the anxiety attacks - why? Aside from being some of the worst acting RDJ has done (he looks like he's faking it EVERY TIME), again there's no explanation as to what or why. There's a throwaway line, but this was never alluded to in the Avengers and it wasn't really developed in IM3 and it serves as a distraction more than anything else.
There's so much more wrong with this. Calling it Iron Man was also offensive, as he's Iron Man for barely 15 minutes of screen time, and even then he's mostly getting beaten up. I'm sorry, this is the same superhero who got shot by a tank with barely a scratch - and suddenly his armor is getting melted by the human equivalent of a soldering iron? Really? And did I mention the horridly inappropriate points of humor during the final battle? Way to just totally deflate any sense of tension in the scene. Why not have Benny Hill music playing in the background? Wouldn't have been out of place.
Honestly, if the first half of this movie wasn't as good as it was this would be getting 1 star. Better than Iron Man 2 - yes. But barely.