In 2013, one year after Marvel brought Earth’s mightiest heroes on the big screen together for the first time in The Avengers, the studio released Iron Man 3. Tony Stark is easily the MCU’s most popular – and possibly its most significant – character, so the conclusion of his standalone outings was a huge deal.

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Superhero fans turned up in droves to see the movie, excited for Iron Man to finally face his arch-nemesis, the Mandarin. Unfortunately, the threequel disappointed many fans. Here we look at 5 reasons why the controversies were justified and 5 why the movie is underrated.

Justified: The Mandarin fake-out was a dirty trick

Iron Man 3 Trevor Slattery

The Mandarin is one of the most iconic villains in the Marvel Comics universe. He is to Iron Man what the Joker is to Batman. The trailers for Iron Man 3 hyped the Mandarin as the next terrifying menace to face Tony Stark on the big screen.

Then we had the rug pulled out from under us as the Mandarin was revealed to be a soccer hooligan pretending to be a fearsome terrorist leader.

At the very least, Marvel is fixing this by depicting the real Mandarin in the upcoming Shang-Chi movie, but we’ll never get to see him face Tony Stark.

Underrated: It doesn’t feel like an MCU movie

Iron Man 3 in the Snow on Christmas

Iron Man 3 still adheres to the rigid MCU story formula, especially with its big final battle, but it doesn’t feel like your usual MCU movie.

As great as the MCU movies are – and no matter what Scorsese and Coppola might say, their interconnected nature is undeniably a revolution of what can be done with the art of filmmaking – a few of its installments feel more like TV episodes than movies, which is a symptom of fitting into a larger universe.

Iron Man 3 feels like its own thing, with its own style, and that’s thanks to director Shane Black’s idiosyncratic voice.

Justified: The final battle is a mess

Pretty much every MCU movie ends with a big final battle. Iron Man 3 is no different, taking Tony Stark and James Rhodes to a dock where they have to fight Aldrich Killian and his Extremis-infected goons to save Pepper Potts and the President of the United States.

Tony is joined by the Iron Legion, his army of suits of armor programmed to defend themselves. This was a promising setup for the movie’s finale. But the weakness of Killian and the crutch of the Iron Legion made this an easy fight to win. The sequence is a mess. It can’t decide what the emotional core of the action is.

Underrated: Tony had to face the bad guys without his armor

Sometimes, the most interesting thing a superhero sequel can do is take away the hero’s superpowers. The first movie is all about giving new abilities to an unsuspecting character to provide them with the motivation to become a hero. An equally interesting conflict can be taking those abilities away. Is the character still a hero without their superpowers?

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Spider-Man 2 posed this question, and so did Iron Man 3. By taking Tony to Tennessee with a damaged suit. Shane Black made Tony prove himself without being able to use his armor as a crutch. This was a very interesting plot development.

Justified: Ike Perlmutter sidelined the female characters

Maya Hansen in Iron Man 3

Originally, Shane Black’s plan with the plot of Iron Man 3 was to reveal Maya Hansen as the evil genius behind everything. Unfortunately, Ike Perlmutter was running Marvel back then. He’s the guy who put off making movies about Black Panther and Captain Marvel because of his prejudices.

Perlmutter vetoed the female villain, claiming that female toys wouldn’t sell, and he also had all the other female roles in the film reduced. The first and second acts still seem to set up Maya as the true villain, and Killian doesn’t feel like a real threat, whereas Maya does, so the change doesn’t make sense.

Underrated: Shane Black’s signature humor

When Jon Favreau was making the first couple of Iron Man movies, he allowed Robert Downey, Jr. to improvise a lot of his lines, which helped to establish the tone of the character. Shane Black continued this in Iron Man 3, with Downey ad-libbing lines like, “Dads leave, no need to be a p***y about it,” but the director also infused the script with his signature sense of humor.

Black is one of the few screenwriters who can always be identified by their dialogue. Marvel allowed Black to bring the same wit to Iron Man 3 that he brought to The Long Kiss Goodnight and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Justified: Yet another villain who hates Tony Stark

Aldrich Killian powered up in Iron Man 3

If there’s one silver lining to Iron Man’s tragic death, it’s that we’ll finally get some villains in the MCU who aren’t motivated by a personal grudge against Tony Stark – or, rather, less of them, since we still got a Stark-hating villain after his death in the form of Mysterio.

In Iron Man 3, the woefully generic villain, Aldrich Killian, is yet another bad guy driven by his hatred of Tony. Killian built a whole terrorist empire and developed a deadly virus and got in bed with the Vice President of the United States, all to get back at Tony for ignoring his pitch over a decade earlier.

Underrated: Inventive action sequences

Tony rescues people in midair in Iron Man 3

Shane Black, Iron Man 3’s writer and director, is renowned as one of the greatest action movie writers of all time. After all, he’s the creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise. Black structures his stories to use action to drive the plot forward. And he doesn’t just use generic action scenes; he’ll throw some creative twists in there.

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This can be seen all over Iron Man 3 in sequences like the “Barrel of Monkeys” scene, in which Tony uses a remotely piloted suit to save a dozen or so people as they fall from Air Force One, 30,000 feet above the ground.

Justified: Nonsensical inciting incident

Helicopter attacks Tony's mansion in Iron Man 3

The inciting incident in Iron Man 3 – the moment that kicks off the conflict and sets the events of the movie in motion – doesn’t make any sense.

Tony Stark goes in front of a bunch of news cameras and tells the Mandarin, the feared terrorist that has been threatening to kill him, his actual home address. Then, he goes home and some helicopters show up to blow his house into the ocean.

Considering how paranoid Tony has become by the start of this movie, it doesn’t make sense that his Malibu mansion would have no external security system in place whatsoever.

Underrated: Tony Stark’s character arc is powerful

Tony Stark (Robert Downy Jr.) in Iron Man 3

Writer-director Shane Black expertly built on Tony Stark’s MCU character arc in Iron Man 3. Following his near-death experience in Iron Man 3, Tony is having PTSD attacks – which, according to Psychology Today, were depicted accurately in the film – and compulsively designing new suits in anticipation of a cosmic threat that he won’t be able to stop. (This movie is an important step towards Thanos’ arrival.)

Pepper is scared for Tony, and wants him to ease off his duties as Iron Man. By the end of the movie, that’s what he does. He even throws his arc reactor into the ocean in a cathartic moment.

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