I saw "Iron Man 3" finally last night at West Boylston Cinemas. I really liked the action sequences and the humor, but I do have a few minor nitpicks. There are some spoilers I will mention.
I was disappointed at how the Mandarin was portrayed in this movie. At first he seemed interesting and intimidating, for instance how he portrayed himself, how he spoke on camera, and what he appeared to be doing on live camera broadcasted to all of America appeared to be very well done. There was something about his character at first that struck me as interesting if not mysterious, and I was looking forward to see what he could truly do. I was hoping his rings were magical like in the comics considering that in "The Avengers" there was both science and magic, or at least he was a mastermind terrorist. I did have an uneasy suspicion that the movie was going to go a different route when they didn't show Guy Peirce's character Aldrich Killian speak to the Mandarin when they shared the screen. Unfortunately, the Mandarin that we saw on screen was merely an actor hired by Aldrich Killian in order to cover up the test super soldiers that ended up exploding as well as a means to kidnap the President of the United States and kill him. I was hoping for something more than just a war profiting business just trying to make more money through evil means, however it did provide some interesting tidbits.
Aldrich Killian as the true Mandarin seemed like an interesting concept, having a much more flamboyant character distract the public eye allowing him to get away with more. Having himself and his super soldiers have super strength, regeneration, improved skills, and expelling dangerous amounts of heat did provide Iron Man with a really tough opponent without resorting to building more robots as an attempt to copy what Tony Stark did.
I also thought Tony Stark seemed a bit more unlikeable at times within this movie. He seemed to act like an ass to people despite all that he has been through in the other movies, he seemed to be troubled with things he shouldn't really have been that troubled with, and he made some stupid decisions. It however led to some interesting ideas. Tony Stark had to rely on his mind for a while after his home gets blown up and his suit breaks down. Man, even when Jarvis goes offline it seemed to put Tony Stark in a dire situation. At the end of the movie he did seem to redeem himself.
The end was really cool though. It was awesome seeing Jarvis operate a multitude of Iron Man suits in order to fight the super soldiers. And since Tony Stark had to put on one Iron Man suit after another to face the Mandarin's destructive power, it seemed as if he was actually in very deep trouble in this fight. It did seem tragic when Pepper appeared to fall to her death, though it should have hit me that she'd come back since she was injected with the super soldier serum. It was awesome how she gave the finishing blow to the Mandarin despite Tony had already put him in his suit and set it to self destruct.
