Good Start, but ultimately disappointing

Rating: 7/10 (9 May 2013)

Iron Man 3 started out well. It's a decent action-thriller-comedy, but ultimately disappointing as an Iron Man movie. The main reason for this is that there's very little Iron Man in the movie. For a solid 80% of the movie (at least) we get a lot of Tony Stark running around sans suit and quite a bit of remote suit action mostly controlled by Jarvis, though occasionally by Stark. There's very little of actually Tony-in-the-suit Iron Man time and action. Even during the big fight sequences neither Tony nor Rhodey actually get much action in their suits (Rhodey actually has no action sequences in the suit, unless you call being instantly incapacitated and forced out of the suit action).
A little less Tony and a little more Iron Man would have made a lot of difference. As it is, the movie should have been called "Tony Stark with the Iron Man Suit." Then there's what they did to the Mandarin. He started out well, sort of a Ra's Al Ghul type of mysterious terrorist with unknown motivations. A good way of presenting the character when you don't have several decades and hours of screen time to develop the character's comic book mythos. Unfortunately, half way through the movie they make the Mandarin a joke and a clown, and a potential powerful and intimidating opponent for Iron Man is quickly discarded.
And then there's the cherry on the icing of bad decisions - a guy who breathes fire. The entire audience in the theatre I was at groaned when that happened - an incident only slighted mitigated by Stark remarking: "You breathe fire now?" The rest of the bad guys ultimately fall flat because you never get to find out what their motivations are? Why is Killian doing what he's doing? Why does Hanson do what she does? No one's motivations are explained, leaving them flat and colourless.
The movie ends with a extended sequence that almost seems like a possible farewell to the RDJ-Stark-Iron Man character, and a quick run through of what might have actually been a better story if they had dealt with Stark's alcoholism rather than creating an anxiety disorder for him.
I think people are going to miss the movie this could have been, which would have far surpassed what we ended up getting.