A great way to start off Phase II of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Rating: 7/10 (20 May 2013)

Okay, before I begin, I saw this movie one week ago and had to think it over for a while before I decided to write out my full thoughts on the film. So, here they are:
First of all, I was expecting something bigger and deeper than the last two Iron Man installments. From the looks of the trailers and TV spots, the Mandarin was going to push Tony to his limits and will make him question whether the suit makes the man or the man makes the suit. The trailers and TV spots added a sense of doom to the film; a sense that it will be one of a kind, there's no going back.
...unfortunately, that was not the case. But do not fret, this movie was still great, but it was (as expected) not without some gleaming flaws. But let's talk about why this movie kicks your a** first.
Robert Downey Jr. is just as good, lovable and snarky as Tony Stark, and I would go out on a limb and say that this is Downey's best work as Tony Stark yet! If you do not like this movie, you will at least come out of the theaters agreeing with your friends/family that Downey was perfect and pretty much held this movie up like Atlas holding the sphere on Van Halen's "5150" album cover.
Another thing that kicked a** about this movie was the action scenes. There's no doubt that they really refined the action in this movie (even though it did come in spades) and upped the ante. The CGI was decent, but at times, it was pretty noticeable that certain objects and characters were computer-generated. One of the things I wish they did a little bit better with was the editing.
The acting was also fairly good. Like I said, Downey was perfect as Tony Stark. Gwyneth Paltrow did a pretty fair job as Pepper, and I think this was also one of Paltrow's best outings as the character, but that's just me. Guy Pearce as the film's baddie Aldrich Killian surprised me greatly. I expected him to be a clone of Justin Hammer from Iron Man 2 but I was VERY wrong. Pearce is a diverse actor and it really shows in this film. Pearce is pretty underrated and this should be a minor show of evidence. Overall, the acting was top-notch.
Now... on to the flaws a.k.a. why this film didn't impress me AS much.
First of all... the Mandarin... the d*mn Mandarin...
What they did to Mandarin was almost unbelievable. I had to shake my head a couple times and even pinch my arm to comprehend what they did to this beloved character. They took one of Iron Man's greatest foes and turned him into a mockery. While I have my own reasons for being angry about that, I can't necessarily blame Shane Black or Drew Pearce for trying something different, but I believe one of the main reasons why people are ticked off at this film (besides the obvious) was the fact that they built up the Mandarin and made him BEYOND hyped up. They marketed him just as he was in the comics: a threatening, new villain that will put Tony Stark to the ultimate test. Instead, the Mandarin was written out as a limey drunk with a drug problem. Not only that, the Mandarin was FAKE! The Mandarin doesn't even exist, and to push it even further, they made KILLIAN out to be the real Mandarin, not the dude who looked exactly like the Mandarin! What kind of sense does that make?
But once again, I can't necessarily blame Black or Pearce for testing the waters with audiences. The thing is, that "test" didn't exactly bode well for die-hard fans of the lore like me. The only thing positive out of this was that Ben Kingsley did a great job being both sinister (even if he faked it) and a washed-up actor who drinks too much and pops too many pills. Oh well.
Another thing that brought this movie down a lot was the fact that they really undermined certain characters. Don Cheadle's character Rhodey only seems to serve as a recurring brick joke because of his new name as Iron Patriot (which also incurred the ire of plenty because Iron Patriot was really Norman Osborn's alias when he had a variant of the Iron Man armor) and it was only in the finale that he was worth at least SOMETHING to the plot besides a reason to make audiences chuckle. Stark also seems to have gotten soft on his development of the new suits, because when he actually starts kicking a**, his suit is like aluminum and just gets torn apart like butter compared to his previous appearances, where his suit was actually made of... you know, IRON!
One last thing, the Extremis virus didn't really live up to its comic book counterpart, which was purely a serum of sorts that speeds of the healing process of the human body. Here, it not only does that, but turns the people with Extremis into Human Torch wannabes that function like the T-100 from Terminator 2. Pretty odd.
Overall, Iron Man 3 is pretty good, but it has a LOT of major flaws that really bring it down to its knees almost like Tony on the official movie poster. It had a lot of promise but some of that promise was washed away. However, its efforts to impress were not without some good results. As I said in the summary, a great way to start off the new era of the MCU, and I'd say it is better than Iron Man 2 but not by much, even if I liked Iron Man 2. I give it 7 stars out of 10.