An enjoyable mixed bag

Rating: 7/10 (18 April 2020)

Things I like about Iron Man 3 :
1. It's the MCU's Christmas movie (duh) ;
2. Tony Stark's Avengers PTSD storyline, and the fact that it's a much more personal movie in terms of character development ;
3. Happy being the forehead of security ;
4. The House Party and Clean Slate protocols.
Things I don't like about Iron Man 3 :
1. The EXTREMIS storyline and the bad guys on fire ;
2. Guy Pearce's Killian being somewhat forgettable as a villain ;
3. Some annoying side characters (the gum-chewing bad guy and the television van guy, for example) ;
4. The twist. Or do I really? This is what frustrates me about this movie : there is so much stuff that I love about it that I don't know if my mind is making excuses for the Mandarin or not. The fact of the matter is this : Guy Pearce is as generic a villain as they get, and I would have rather had Ben Kingsley as the main antagonist. As a whole, the movie is undeniably flawed ; but I love Robert Downey Jr. in this role so much that this remains one of my most rewatched MCU movies.