Writer's preface: It should be noted that I have never been a reader of the Iron Man comics or followed all the going-on's of that corner of the Marvel universe very closely. Not to say I'm not a fan of the character, I'm just not as affected by changes to that mythos as, say, Spider-Man. I only say this because the movie contains a huge change to Iron Man lore. While I found it to be refreshing and a interesting twist, I can see how hardcore fans may be angered by it. So just a heads up that this opinion comes from someone who is more tolerable of said twist than you might be.

Anyway, Iron Man 3 is pretty friggin' great. While Iron Man 2 was a bit muddled by the burden of being the set up for the rest of the Marvel movies leading up to and including The Avengers, this movie completely succeeds because it dumps all that baggage and aims to be a straight up character piece, focusing instead on Tony Stark and his battle with his inner demons. But also unlike IM2, the conflict is much more interesting (Stark has PTSD after the events of The Avengers and his relationship to the armor is fully explored) and never makes the movie slow to a halt.

In fact, the movie never waists anytime at all: every scene advances the plot, provides necessary relief from the drama, develops character or motivation, or just kicks ass. And let me tell ya, the amount of ass kicked will leave you feeling like your own ass has been kicked. Unlike the action in the last two, which just consisted of Iron Man flying in and shooting some dudes with repulsor rays for a minute or two, biding time before the villain gets into his own impractically big armor, the action here is varied and creative, whether it'd be a death-defying mid air rescue, Stark having to defend himself with incomplete armor (or no armor at all), or good old fashion super-powered fisticuffs.

The bad guys are also much better handled this time around; the focus is still on the hero, but these villains actually bring something new and never before seen in these movies to the table. Guy Pearce as the super genius Aldrich Killian steals every scene he's in, and Ben Kingsley is just a big ball of awesome craziness as The Mandarin.

And the Extremis technology around which the movie is based allows for their army of henchmen to do some...pretty out there things. I won't give away what that exactly entails to the spoiler-sensitive, but it's creepy, makes for some imaginative scenarios, and makes the movie feel like a true comic book tale.

It's not perfect, mind you. Rebecca Hall's character doesn't really add up to much, and I would have like to have seen some more showing, less telling when it comes to the PTSD plot line (it's still fantastic stuff, though), but those are small complaints to everything the movie gets right.

Rather than go for a big, flashy follow up to The Avengers, Marvel let director Shane Black make a smaller, more cerebral movie to introduce the masses to the next phase of their movies, and it works. If you're expecting a setup for the next few movies, you're going to be disappointed. But that's not what this movie is aiming for; this is Tony Stark's story, and it serves as a completion to a lot of the themes and character arcs started in the first film. And if Robert Downey Jr. and Marvel decided that this would be the character's final solo outing, I'd be completely satisfied.

9/10

P.S. Thank you for having a child character who doesn't suck and actually adds something to the movie.