Love/hate relationship.

Rating: 7/10 (30 August 2013)

Finally watched it.
I'm not a great fan of Marvel/Disney collaboration. Let's get some of my main gripes out first. Hear me out, Disney/Marvel:
Don't force child characters into these movies. It's exactly that, forcing and it feels like it too (although it didn't bother me as much as I originally thought). Don't make it seem like a punch from an IM suit does nothing to a regular person, it would break their necks. Don't force this many jokes into a movie series that already, at the very lowest level, has enough humor that works. Don't include some trite gunfights with absolutely no sense of danger into these movies. Don't think that including Bill Maher and Joan Rivers isn't ridiculous. Don't think a mediocre (or bad) plot isn't mediocre (or bad) because tons of crap is happening all the time as a smokescreen. Overall, some things do not make sense and not only that, but some of the scenes negate some established "facts" from the first two films.
Disney, I hate you. Go away. Go ruin some teen female actors, you ridiculous, despicable shadow of a company you once were. There, now I got those out of the way. There were annoyances, yes. They could've toned down the silliness, some useless scenes and characters and make things a little more mean, more serious business. Sad that they didn't, because simply by removing stuff and not adding to those I mentioned, they would've made this a better Iron Man movie. If my complaints have nothing to do with Disney and everything to do the director and writer, then...nah, I still hate Disney.
Now, to the good and neutral things. It is very, very entertaining. There's a lot of stuff happening almost all the time. Some of the action is inventive and all of it looks good. Some of the jokes that don't suck are pretty good. Iron Man 3 is never boring - not once - and almost every scene has a couple of layers. Not deep layers, but "not boring"-layers. IM3 is very rewatchable. On my blu-ray version the picture quality is great as well as the sound, and I liked the "Agent Carter" - featurette.
This is more of a Tony Stark movie than an Iron Man movie, which is...interesting. On the downside, Tony isn't wearing his suit much. We see them a lot, he just isn't in them most of the time. That's pretty disappointing, but there's an upside: more Robert Downey Jr.
When RDJ is not telling a forced joke, he makes a good one, and he owns this character right now as well as Harrison Ford owns Indy/Solo and Hugh Jackman owns Wolverine. He is a joy to watch and additionally handles more serious and emotional scenes very well too. Jarvis has a slightly bigger role in this, which I really do like. He's really a character here and Paul Bettany's voicework is excellent. And yes, I do like Gwyneth Paltrow. She's adorable. Don't agree with what they do with her character, but that aside, it's all good. Guy Pearce is at times just OK, but there are glimpses of him being pretty good too. Ben Kingsley...well, interesting to the very least and he delivers exactly what the filmmakers intended. Don Cheadle got some stuff to do in this film, which is nice. Shame that I don't care about half of it.
This really is a weird one. Plenty of good, fun stuff and plenty of bad, forced stuff and negating some rules of Iron Man - universe. You can tell it's directed by a man who has made his living with action comedies. And I don't say that just as a lame insult: there are some pretty nice ideas, little tonal shifts to keep things "fun" and the movie always keeps going forward with quite a pace. There's lot to like about Shane Black, after all I love 80's action movies far more than generic and shallow PG13-nonsense we get nowadays, and Shane Black has earned his credentials with good movies we still love today. So while he doesn't cater to the fanboys as much as I'd personally like, he does deliver a fun ride and overall a very nice movie experience.
For me this could've been the best of all three IM movies, but it isn't. That said, it's easy to understand those who like this one the most. I don't regret buying it, and for me it's much, much more entertaining than Iron Man 2. The first one wasn't topped of course. I gave the first film a 9, IM2 got a very generous 6, so this one gets a 7.
I'd advise approaching "Iron man 3" not as a serious comic book adaptation, but just as an entertaining movie. As such, it does not disappoint. IM3 is certainly more enjoyable than the final movies in Raimi's Spider-man trilogy, the original X-men trilogy and Nolan's Batman trilogy.
IM3 feels like a film you can watch a few times if you don't come to hate its shortcomings and questionable handling of source material too much. (edit: rewatchable indeed, watched it three times already)