Iron Man 3

Release Date: May 3, 2013

Watch Date: July 13, 2025

“Marvel Studios’ Iron Man 3 pits brash-but-brilliant industrialist Tony Stark/Iron Man against an enemy whose reach knows no bounds. When Stark finds his personal world destroyed at his enemy’s hands, he embarks on a harrowing quest to find those responsible. This journey, at every turn, will test his mettle. With his back against the wall, Stark is left to survive by his own devices, relying on his ingenuity and instincts to protect those closest to him. As he fights his way back, Stark discovers the answer to the question that has secretly haunted him: Does the man make the suit, or does the suit make the man?”

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Bob and I disagree on this film.

I think it’s better than Iron Man 2, and he does not. We both think it’s a good film. We both think it’s a good man to Iron Man’s solo contributions. We both think it moves the character forward and brings him back to his roots and that it portrays PTSD for what would be an insane event accurately, and it shows a man not taking care of his mental health well.

But I think the villain is better and he thinks that Iron Man 2s villain is better and he is wrong and I am right but the rankings won’t reflect that because while I write about the movies he ranks them and while he does occasionally take my opinions into consideration, this was not one of those times.

Rude.

Moving along.

All of those things I said earlier? Those are all true. Even my thing about the villain being better. What Iron Man does well, which is kind of surprising for a super hero movie, and it is what I think gave the MCU the oomph that it needed to basically take over the cinematic world for a time, was to take a genre that should be about action and adventure and actually make it fairly introspective, and cause the characters to grow and react to things in a semi-believable way. And the third entry in the franchise doesn’t disappoint on that score.

The only thing that I think it could have done better was the ending. I didn’t really feel like the ending was very satisfying as to who Iron Man was or was going to become as the film progressed. He does still build too many suits. He doesn’t seem to really cope well with the trauma. He does lean more on the people around him, which I kind of thought was the point of the second film. But seeing as how I know just how much Tony Stark will evolve as the MCU continues to move on, and how he’ll continue to steal the spotlight even in films where he’s part of an ensemble cast, I’m not too bothered by it. But I think if you were refusing to watch any Marvel movie beyond the Iron Man films and the first Avengers movie, you might be a little disappointed.

Luckily though, no one does that. So you can sit back and enjoy and not worry too much about an ending feeling a little bit cut off.