Ruined franchise :( - I don't understand why this is ranking so well.

Rating: 1/10 (2 May 2013)

I feel sorry for all those people in other industries (e.g. video games, toys, comics ...etc) who spent millions betting on some sort of continuity, this film ruined all the character / universe building that the last 3 films (inc. Avengers) tried so hard to establish...Nice one Shane....
For some odd reason the ironman suits have been dumbed down, before they were capable of withstanding direct tank shell hits, being hit by a god's hammer and even being sucked into an engine designed to lift an aircraft carrier but now they explode into pieces when hit by a bus or kung- fu chopped out of the sky ( I know Extremis can make hands burn up to 3000 degrees but surely they wouldn't melt suits as easily like that, in the second film the armour gets tangled in an 'arc reactor' electro whip which probably generated temperatures as hot as the sun and they were still able to hold their own ~ an example of broken continuity).
Tony Stark is now embarrassingly thick. Initially I liked the character development at the start, he's got some sort of post traumatic stress syndrome and he is regretting his flamboyant chauvinistic lifestyle which has intentionally put Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan in the line of fire, he even says to Pepper, in an emotional scene, that she is the most important person in his life..so when the 'techno-corporation- terrorists' come to attack his Malibu House ~ which you would expect to be slightly more heavily defended, in light of him having secret technology that everyone wants! he dances around in a prototype suit knowing too well that he could activate all his other suits via Jarvis and overwhelm 3 attack helicopters. Even when the attack was over, why couldn't he get into a working suit and/or assign a suit to look after Pepper AND/OR ask Bruce (aka. THE HULK) (who appears in the end credits and who he is chummy with) to help out on this quest. --Sigh--
In light of the logic explained above, the rest of the film doesn't make sense. At any time he could have called in another suit, or asked any of his Avengers friends ( we are constantly reminded about the success of the Avengers in this film) to help out.
The ending is truly terrible. The bad guy (Killian) gives his hostage (Pepper -obviously) super powers --why--(lol!) who, Lo and behold, saves the day! It is also revealed that Tony has all these awesome suits under his command, why he made them is never explained! ~which is a shame as Disney could have released a new toy for each suit (..but why would kids want a toy which features for 2 seconds and then blows up?). Worst of all Tony then proceeds to self-destruct all the ironman suits and throws his arc reactor carelessly into the sea ~ completely undermining the whole 'keeping my technology secret' theme from the other 3 films.
I guess they could salvage Ironman by taking the Dallas approach, Tony wakes up relived that the events of this film was just a horrible nightmare.