Iron -Man 3

O.k here we go on very little sleep after seeing a late night showing.

Mostly entertaining, I think Iron Man 3 succeeds if not in being a good movie then at at least better than the previous film in this trilogy. It has a strong start and acknowledges the Avengers as being a traumatic even for the character , part of this being the fact he has to acknowledge that gods and aliens exist in the world and his power is he's a guy who build things. There is a wink to A.I.M but no guys in yellow beep keeper suits, hazmat suits would have worked as well. It was somewhere in the first big action scene that things went left of center for me. In a much similar way to how they did in Thor, because for almost of the movie we have a powerless Tony Stark, due to armor malfunctions. So this way I suppose we have an Iron-man movie with him not in the suit the bulk of the movie ,trying to make it more like a James bond film and the giving you a big superhero ending like something out of the transformers as Stark jumps from one armor to the next.

I can appreciate the message being conveyed by the depiction of the Mandarin, as just an actor playing role as I have always said you can throw any Arab in front of a camera and tell the world its Osma Bin Laden and how are we to say different, if all the back story we have on him is what CNN tells us. But at the end of the day the Mandarin who is a pivotal character in the Marvel Universe when it comes to Stark's world...just doesn't exist. No power rings , nothing. So if you going into this expecting it to be faithful to the comics in any way then expect to be let down. The fact the movie has some heart and Downey's portrayal of Stark continues to carry the film don't make it a waste of money but after the few two film captured a balance of reverence and being broad enough for the general movie going public then, this is a jarring turn.

The only accurate information the creators gave us going into this is its not as dark as the trailers would lead you to believe. They keep a low level of humor buzzing through out. As far as Easter eggs, they have jumped the rabbit on this. Don't expect to see S.H.E.I.L.D or any Avengers, unless the trailer for Thor 2 counts and the post-credit scene , which does not have anything to do with Guardians of the Galaxy.
The best easter egg to me was the Hulk-Buster armor and the ten seconds it spent on screen.They are really going to have a lot of action figures to sell.

The fact Norman Osborn wasn't in the Iron Patriot costume was fine as he is in the rights to Spider-man deal, and the Iron Patriot was pretty much a running joke. There was no Rescue even though Potts does have on a suit for a second. The president has an Iron Patriot suit on for a minute but that doesn't make him the Iron Patriot.

The whole plane scene felt a little forced to me but with the exception of when things got very transformers for the big battle scene which by no means out did the Avengers the action was better than the sort of thing I saw in the Fast and Furious six trailer. The bad guy an odd choice but worked. The end either is going to start the tone to write Iron-man out of the Avengers to make room for the new characters or is going to make it harder for them to get the band back together sort of thing because this movie doesn't lead you to believe they became functioning team. The tug of war between being a good movie and a good comic book movie...super-hero movie, rage through out as they are somewhat apologetic where the previous films didn't so the change of direction did bring its changes in the tone.