Last week Movieville very kindly gave me two tickets to see an advanced screening of Iron Man 3. What a dream! (This also entitled me the glory of being able to lord it over everyone I know!)

I went into this film with extremely high expectations, I loved the previous two films although I felt they were both slightly lacking in their final fight scenes, but they were excellent movies nonetheless. So on Wednesday the 17th I hopped on a coach to London where I met up with my pal Jonah. We made our way to Leicester Square’s Odeon Cinema and showed our (very fancy) tickets and took our seats. Just before they dimmed the lights we were given a wicked surprise and was introduced to director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) and co writer Drew Pearce (who were both very apologetic for not being RDJ). These two seemed to truly have enjoyed the experience of making this film, which is always wonderful.

They do their little bit and the lights dim, I prepare myself for a tech filled CGI orgy, and Tony doesn't disappoint. He’s been very busy since the Avengers adventures in NYC and has a whole bunch of fun new toys to show us. We are also introduced to a new menace thats fucking shit up - the Mandarin. For those who have not read the Iron Man comics the Mandarin is one of Iron Man’s arch enemies who is supposed to have ten magic rings that give him various powers to wreak his particular brand of carnage. However, this is not the case in the film. He has developed a penchant for bombs it seems (I wont give anything more away with this storyline but huge Mandarin fans MIGHT be disappointed).

I like the Mandarin in this (Ben Kingsley is awesome, as usual) as a standalone character, but he is hardly comparable to the comic book version, However, he is a great counterpart to Guy Pearce’s character, Aldrich Killian, who is relentless. The film gets off to a flying start and does not really let up pace at all, which at points proves to be a slight issue (e.g. when Tony totally thinks Pepper has died and does not seem to have time to feel it, making his character lose a bit of the human touch they had been building up throughout the rest of the film.)

I don’t want to give too much of the plot away because they deliberately made the trailers vague to keep the mystery and the last thing they need is me to spoil it for everyone, so all I will say is that with this film they hit all of the right notes even if they accidentally knocked some wrong ones at the same time. They delivered on techno magnificence, a final fight scene really worthy of the man in the iron suit and a great ending to Iron Man’s solo adventures. It fell down for me in a couple of very minor ways, mainly I felt like it was too heavy on the comedy and the quick quips. I know it’s a comic movie but this goes past the usual narcissistic dry wit we expect from Stark.

Overall I personally think it’s the best Iron Man film and it really bodes well for the future of Marvel on the big screen.

8.5/10

Thanks Movieville for this wicked opportunity!