Iron Man 3: The Five Biggest Mistakes

Once spoilers started to hit the Web for Iron Man 3 last week, it became clear that the movie wasn’t going to please everyone. More akin to The Dark Knight Rises than The Avengers, director Shane Black and his co-writer Drew Pearce took some chances–some of which paid off and some of which didn’t.And given the rather spectacularly high expectations heaped on this movie by the “new classic” status of the first film, the disappointment of the second and the box office performance of The Avengers, some seemingly minor problems with the movie are bound to be at the center of many of the film’s reviews.Our own reviews, in which we gave the film a B+ and reckoned that Black did a generally great job, certainly hovered on some of these points for a while.The MandarinSome people will like the twist and others won’t, but in the final analysis, it’s likely that comics fans–who are still a big part of the base for a movie like this–will hold on to some of the frustration they feel over the perceived mistreatment of Tony’s archenemy for quite a while.We still can’t shake that bit of dialogue between Rhodey and Tony: “This is The Mandarin?” “Iknow. This is embarrassing.” When your own heroes point that out, it’s hard to step away from.And, of course, there will be criticism that the “twist” was essentially already done in the recent past–with Ra’s al Ghul in Batman Begins, who used a flunky as the “head” of his organization until it was time to strike.Of course, here’s Kingsley as a Mandarin-like character in War, Inc. That film had a similar twist.