Tony Stark, suffering from PTSD, battles the terrorist known as The Mandarin while trying to pull his life together.
It’s charismatic, witty, Tony Stark, with 50% more whining. If your complaints with Iron Man 1 focused on it not being emo enough, you’ve found your film. There’s lot of good here, but the fun level has been lowered, without raising the meaning—just the whining. Iron Man 3 wants to be a drama, or Batman, but luckily it can’t quite manage it. There’s still too much of a light in Robert Downey Jr. Aldrich Killian makes for a lackluster villain, but The Mandarin is everything he isn’t. I read one review which claimed how you feel about this movie is all down to how you feel about the Mandarin twist. I disagree, as I love the twist, but only like the film. Iron Man 3 works well when Stark is allowed to be Stark, and it has that rarest of creatures, a non-annoying child in an action flick.
The ending is painful. The fireworks (trying to avoid too many spoilers) are supposed to be part of a metaphor for his relationship with Pepper, but fail, as does everything connected to the Tony-Stark-growing-up metaphor. It is even worse now that Age of Ultron is out since the newer film tosses out the ending of Iron Man 3 without a comment.