What an embarrassment, a complete slap in the face!!

Rating: 1/10 (11 May 2013)

I watch the trailer for Iron Man 3 months ago, I love it. I go to a friend of mine who's deep into comics. I ask him, "what's the deal with Mandarin?'. His reply? 'Mandarin is to Iron Man as Joker is to Batman'. WHOA! Hearing that after watching the trailer I was more than hyped to see this film; if for no other reason than enjoying Avengers and hoping they rebound from the horror that was Iron Man 2. Dare I say the third entry in this series is worse than the second one! The essence of superhero stories/movies is the villain. We don't get one here. From what I've heard, Mandarin is as big as they come in the Iron Man universe, the character was right there for the movie makers to translate to the big screen. But what does Shane Black & Co. do? They make an absolute joke out of Mandarin! He's there, but then he's....NOT there. That's the big twist?? The 'villain' in this film turns out to be someone who Tony Stark blows off one New Years Eve years ago who essentially comes back years later with unexplained powers and using a 'boogeyman' as a decoy. The 'boogeyman' aspect might be the only positive of the film, as it holds a mirror to the ways and actions of the US in the last decade or so.
There's just so many gripes I have with this film, but it's honestly not worth the extra time it'll take to type here, as I'm sure there's enough reviews on here describing just what is so wrong with this film. The sheer FAILURE of this film may just be a sign that it's time to slow down on the whole comic book craze in Hollywood. If they are just going to disregard the source material while at the same time taking a big sh!t on the wishes of comic book fans (and I'm not even one, per se), it would be best to just stay away from the comic book world altogether.
Again, I write this review as a movie fan. Iron Man 3 is just a bad movie. There is NOTHING out of the ordinary in this movie. Corny one-liners, idiotic plot holes and twists just pushes this mess of a movie to the depths of hell. I can't believe this script got OK'd by Marvel, Stan Lee & Co. How did they let this pass? If they were able to do Thor and the universe(s) featured in that story, why the hell couldn't they do that here with Mandarin and the 10 rings?!?! If you're going to put Mandarin in the film, PUT HIM IN THE FILM! I'm just appalled at the approach taken here. As loyal as comic fans are, it's understandable that you can't satisfy them all. It is when you show a complete disregard and disrespect for the source material that makes movies like this even more disturbing.
I can only offer condolences to all the fans (comic book fans in particular) that came to this expecting at least SOMETHING along the lines of what Nolan did with The Dark Knight. One cannot blame ANYONE for those expectations. Watching the trailer (which ends up being one of the biggest okie-dokes EVER put on movie fans), this film had the look of an epic with a darker tone, a la Nolan's Batman series. What we get is an inexcusable embarrassment; with the total castration of the hero's archenemy and the same old, same old with regards to effects, story, etc. Iron Man 3 is one of the worst films of the year.... actually, it's one of the worst movies ever made.