I went into the theatre with low expectations, due to what people said on this site. I had actually been really excited to see what the Mandarin would bring to the table. Nevertheless, I was pretty disappointed at what Ben Kingsley’s role actually was. All that being said, I actually enjoyed the movie and Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian.
I think this movie suffers from what The Dark Knight Rises did. They showed a lot of cool things in the trailer, but those cool things really didn’t have much of a role in the actual movie. Take for example, the scene where Tony lands in the snow, with a dead Mk 42 suit. In the trailer you thought this was gonna be a really impactful scene, where in the movie they played it off in a comedic way. Or the Stephanie Szostack scene where she pins Tony against a wall. In the trailer, it looked really cool and made you curious about her character, when in reality, she was only in that one scene. Basically all of Kingsley’s lines were paraphrased for the trailers. It almost feels like they tried to hide the lighter tone of the movie, by making the trailers seem really dark and edgy.
Another quarrel of mine, was the Mandarin twist scene. Not because of the subject matter of the scene, but because of how it was played off. It just felt like a big “[frick] you” to the fans. It felt like Shane Black forgot that he wasn’t just making a comedy film. The scene really could have been done better. At least in a less comedic way.
I really liked the movie. It had a really cool villain in Aldrich Killian, and his Extremis mofos. If you can get past all the plot twists, you’ll probably really like this movie.
At the end of the day, the movie was a bit of a disappointment. But its a perfect way to start off this blockbuster summer.
8/10