All I’m saying is Marvel better not pull another stunt like they did with Edward Norton and Terrance Howard! We need more RDJ in our MCU because Iron Man 3 was great. Now I’m not saying I want to see an Iron Man 4 or beyond because I’m a trilogy type of guy and I’ve had my fill of Iron Man solo films. Still, we need to see RDJ back as Tony Stark in The Avengers 2 and possible cameos in other future MCU films. Now to get back to the point, Iron Man 3 was possibly the best Iron Man movie I have seen yet. Was it a better movie than The Avengers? No, sadly it was not. Did it have a better story than The Avengers? Yes, the story was way better! I feel Shane Black did a great job in taking over the dynasty that Jon Favreau left behind. It was filled with action, comedy, and suspense. All are necessary for a great comic book film. I thought the story was the strongest of any MCU film I’ve seen to date. It completes it full circle by taking us back to a convention that Stark attended in 1999. Now for us true fans we remember this convention being mentioned by Yinsen in Iron Man and it was nice seeing him again during the New Year’s Eve scene. It is this very sequence of events that thrust Tony into the events of this film. This film mostly revolves around the Extremis super-soldier serum and not robo-suits, which is great. The thing I liked most about this film was the characters. We see RDJ once again playing the fun-loving Stark very well, although this time he’s not as loose and crazy. He’s more sheltered, afraid, and off-kilter. After seeing aliens attack Earth he’s not been the same. Another one of my favorites is Sir Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin. His interpretation is far different from what we know from the comics and I praise the direction they decided to go with him. The trailers barely touched on who this guy really is, and that was a smart choice by the studio. Now my favorite character from this film was Aldrich Killian, played by Guy Pearce. His role Is far from the cameo that he told us it was. Seeing his character change from a gimpy nerd into a badass villain was spectacular. Sadly our boy Rhodes and our girl Potts are given smaller roles this time around, buts it still works. The one character who I thought should have gotten more screen time was Maya Hansen, played by Rebecca Hall. I felt like we needed to hear her speak more and learn more about her. For the second smartest person in the film, you think she would have had more to say. The film was only missing one thing, the “it” factor. I don’t know what “it” is, but this film didn’t have it. That overwhelming feeling you get knowing you’ve seen a masterpiece was missing. It is for that reason that I have to give Iron Man 3 an Excellent 9/10! Hopefully Banner can find out what the story was missing ha-ha.