At least it was better than Iron Man 2

Rating: 6/10 (19 October 2013)

The third movie in the Iron Man franchise, which started out in 2008, has now been released. There was also a lot of hype surrounding this movie to see how it would fare beside other superhero franchises' third movies, such as Spider-Man 3 (2007), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and X3: The Last Stand (2006). X3: The Last Stand did considerably well at the box office making $459,359,555, but did not get a good review from any critic, scoring a 58/100 Metacritic. Spider-man 3 was a hug box office success collecting $890,871,626, but didn't do as well concerning its critical appeal, receiving only a 59/100 on Metacritic. So far the only third movie of a superhero franchise that has done well in terms of box office and quality is The Dark Knight Rises. Having a 78/100 Metacritic and $1,084,439,099 made in the box office, this movie was a great way to end the Batman series. So, how does Iron Man 3 compare to these other third movies?
Well, let's start out by saying that it would be pretty hard for them to make Iron Man 3 much worse than Iron Man 2 (I'm sorry to both of the people out there who actually liked that movie). The cast included Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow (spoiler, her head does not end up in a box), Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, and Rebecca Hall. And I am going to go as far as to say that it was better than the first Iron Man as well. The movie starts out with a flashback to 1999 on New Year's Eve, and ends up connecting everything that happened that night to how everything ended. The feel of this movie is much more of a Dark Knight Rises' type, where everything actually feels dangerous, compared to that of Iron Man 2 where it ended with just another iron suit versus iron suit battle (which I am happy to say, does not happen in this one.) Although the movie has a serious feel to it, there is still a constant stream of jokes coming from Tony Stark, which makes him different from some other superheroes like the more serious Batman or Superman. But he still has to face his main villain which is a terrorist named Mandarin, played by Ben Kingsley, who is somewhat of a Bond villain, but on a more realistic scale. This causes Stark to tell him his home address, and dares him to come and try to kill him, which results in the first of many Michael Bay worthy explosions throughout the movie. The other villain is Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), who is bent on getting revenge on Stark for what happened that night in 1999. Iron Man 3's best quality is that it is more about Tony Stark being a person with responsibilities, rather than just a man in, well, iron.