Meh..

Rating: 5/10 (23 May 2013)

I have to admit I'm a bit disappointing with Iron Man 3. The trailers made it look like it was going in a much darker direction with the story line, and in some ways it delivered, but the end product has far to many flaws to compare with the original Iron Man movie or even its frequently criticized sequel. The biggest issue I have with this movie is the villain. I went into this movie knowing almost nothing about The Mandarin. If I was a comic book person I probably wouldn't have seen the plot twist which changed the intimidating bad guy into a fraud and an incompetent goofball. But seeing as I had no idea what to expect I saw it coming from a mile away. I personally don't have an issue with this plot twist but I can understand why many fans of the comics do. If someone completely changed a character I cared a lot about in a film adaption I would be upset too. The real problem is that we don't get any compensation for this. The only real replacement we get is Guy Pearce's character. When you promise the Mandarin and all you end up coming up with is Guy Pearce puking up an unconvincing CGI fireball then yeah the fans aren't going to be happy.
I can't say I hate this movie. There were a lot of big laughs especially at the beginning and there was some cool action but I can't help feeling it could have been a lot better. Tony's post dramatic stress was a great idea for a subplot but they could have done so much more with it. I was especially disappointed because I've never seen a superhero movies that deals with something like this before. It's also hard to consider Tony a hero when in the end it's Pepper Potts who saves the day. Tony shows a considerable lack of development in this movie which defeats the purpose of telling a darker story line in the first place.
In short you're probably better off going to see Into Darkness.