It was fun; glad we saw it. Liked Ben Kingsley but it was weird that the Mandarin was introduced to the series that way, given his comic book history.
And the Extremis juice was woefully under-explained…I like my plot holes a bit less distracting, like in the Avengers.
Fun, but not the tippy-top tier as far as big comic movies.
magnusblitz
As far as I can tell:
[spoiler]
The Roxxon guy? Not dead. You see him in the mansion later with the girls. The camera doesn’t SHOW him getting shot, don’t forget.
I thought Killian gets a phone call saying they haven’t found a body yet, so he likely does assume Stark might be alive.
The “overheat” might be a safety device to prevent harm to the occupant, so he can bail out if needed. Not to mention AIM worked on the suit so they might have put that in as a feature.
The file thing…yeah, that’s kinda weird. And why crazy female agent’s facial scars didn’t heal.
They didn’t need Tony to fix Extremis. Rebecca Hall’s character did, but Killian was pretty happy with it, so he killed her. Iron Man wasn’t even on the Mandarin’s list till he made his “Address” speech, I’d think.
The Extremis heat-stuff? That’s how it worked in the comics (except firebreathing), supercharging the body to produce excess heat or somesuch. Take it up with Warren Ellis. 
[/spoiler]
That was for the nerds. In the comic books, Ellen Brandt is an AIM agent whose face was burned by Man-Thing.
They weren’t competing; Oracle owns Sun.
The Oracle connection has been in all three Iron Man films and The Avengers. Larry Ellison even had a cameo in 2. As an Oracle employee, I always enjoy playing “Spot the Logo.” 
Just added the “open spoilers” tag to the thread title.
Saw it last night and had a ton of fun. I thought it was much better than two (which I still liked), but not as good as one, which is arguably the best superhero movie of all time.
Regarding the Mandarin - when the big reveal about “Trevor” came, I turned to my friend and whispered “comic book fans are gonna be piiiissssseed.” And I kind of agree with them. You go into a movie, planning to see characters you’re already well familiar with, characters you might even love, knowing this is the only time you’ll probably get to see them on screen, and then the movie basically gives you the finger.” Still, as someone who doesn’t really read comics, I loved it. I thought the Trevor was an interesting and ballsy way to subvert the superhero movie cliche of having multiple villains in the sequels. I’m just not sure it was fair to fans.
Two things which surprised me - I liked the PTSD storyline, and I liked the kid. Normally, throwing the hero in with a precocious child is the fastest way to irritate me, but as soon as Tony told the kid to stop being a pussy (which got the biggest laugh in our theater), I was convinced that sentimentality wasn’t going to factor, and I was okay with it. And giving Tony an anxiety disorder was a great tieback to The Avengers, and it was nice for a character to have to go through something mindbendingly frightening, and then have to deal with consequences afterwards.
And of course the action was brilliant. The ‘barrel of monkeys’ skydive rescue scene had me bouncing in my seat.
No major complaints about this one. I could have done with less vagueness in the ending (oh, you fixed Pepper? In what way? Is she now superhuman? Did you get rid of extremis or just stabilize her? Do you have extremis? EXPLAIN!) Overall, I’d call it maybe the third best Marvel movie, and I plan to see it again soon.
As a lifelong Marvel reader, I guess that should have bothered me, but I was quite happy with the Trevor reveal (especially how his 10 extraterrestrial power rings served no other purpose but to set up Stark to call him “Ringo”.) Which is surprising since I was really bugged by the (much less drastic) rewriting of Dr. Doom in the FF films.
Now that the number one Iron Man nemesis has been proven rather mundane, they should go completely in the other direction for Iron Man 4: Fin Fang Foom!
“Nobody would hire me; typecasting, y’know? So this ‘Spymaster’ guy asked me to stomp around a soundstage, just like I’d done as Barney the Purple Dinosaur…”
Could someone spoil the stinger at the end for me? We left before the credits were over.
It turns out that Tony Stark’s narration was actually him telling the story to Bruce Banner, who fell asleep through the whole thing because he’s not a therapist.
Looks like the box office is pretty good…
I saw a lot of four and five year olds, and that might be a little young. I think nine would be fine. Is he going with friends or with you?
Thank you!
[QUOTE=astorian]
I know this is a judgment call, but do you think the movie had anything grossly inappropriate for a 9 year old?
[/QUOTE]
It’s probably fine. We sat next to a family with three kids under six (and I could write a whole thread about that, but I’ll leave it), and they seemed unaffected. Most of the violence is bloodless and the sex is only implied, never seen.
Any word yet if they are going to do a theatrical release or even just a dvd “chinese cut” with the extra scenes they filmed for that market?
I saw it today and quite liked it. I think a lot of the complaints are nitpicky.
The scarred female agent I originally thought was going to Whitney Frost/Madame Masque–another Iron Man lover/foe.
Saw it tonight and I liked it a lot. I might like it better than the first movie even. It was just an excellent movie, with a great script and great acting.
Since there are a lot of Iron Man/Marvel fans here I thought I’d put this here: 5 Marvel Characters Who Totally Dropped the Ball | Cracked.com The interesting part is in the comments (sort by votes) - there’s a theory that in The Avengers, Loki was too clumsy/weak/stupid to be possible. They speculate he did all of that on purpose, to be taken back to Asgard and steal the infinity gauntlet.
I saw it today. This was the first 3D movie I’ve ever attended.
I liked it a lot.
The bots were apparently programmed to hone in on those with super-high heat signatures as bad guys. It’s exposited by Stark trying to tell Jarvis to not hurt pepper, but his ear piece wasn’t in so she had to take matter into her own hands.
I wanted to like it and I started to like it but the resolution and motivation fell kind of flat to me. Someone said upthread that it started gritty and then turned comedic halfway through nailed it and to me it didn’t sit well. I think it could have been a simpler story and it would have worked out better. As it is, it gets a bit over-complicated.
Also, I didn’t care much for the christmas references in May.
Yeah, I wanted to ask about this too - was the movie delayed? But I thought action movies come out in summer. Hmm…
I just don’t see how the bad guy can survive a self-destructing suit but get killed by a shot from a hand thing.
I live in China and saw the movie yesterday. You don’t want those scenes. They’re background for the doctor that removes the shrapnel, but they’re completely worthless. It’s mostly an excuse to advertise a local milk brand.
I would rather have the extra end credits scene which was removed from our copy. I eventually found a bad version of it on Youtube.