( IM3 handily breezes past the god-awful Iron Man 2 while narrowly inching by Jon Favreau's original Iron Man.) Is it a flawless fling? A perfectly fantastic hurrah?įor that matter, is it a more effective Iron Man 3 than Joss Whedon's The Avengers? For all its bravado and arc-wrapping aspirations, Black's wry action-comedy is more IM4 than IM3, and works better as a solid one-off or a second trilogy opener than a proper close to Marvel's Phase One Stark saga. Iron Man 3 is a far better film than its detractors give it credit, though, quite a different film than the one most will experience during their first viewing, and one that does indeed best each Iron Man that comes before it. Would-be filmfans responded with equally impassioned jeers and cheers when the eagerly anticipated, billion-dollar summer blockbuster debuted in theaters particularly the disenfranchised comicbook readers among you who were none too fond of filmmaker Shane Black and co-writer Drew Pearce's controversial but fearless take on The Mandarin, the foremost villain in Tony Stark's corner of the Marvel Universe. The simply but aptly titled Iron Man 3 falls somewhere between divisive third-parter and undisputed trilogy topper. Even rarer is the fabled Trilogy Topper: a film that outclasses its predecessors and stands tall and proud as the unmistakably best of the bunch.