Disclaimer: This film is one of those that is difficult to discuss without giving away spoilers: I’m going to do my best not to, but be warned, depending on how much you already know, you may find spoilers below. If you don’t want to risk it, stop reading now.

Wow. Marvel really have set themselves some kind of goal with this. The plots that one is often required to navigate as one reads comic books can often be described as sprawling and complicated at best. That situation gets even more convoluted when you start moving characters through each other’s continuities. So when Marvel set Iron Man 3 up as not only a sequel to Iron Man 2 but also Avengers, they really did set themselves on hell of a goal: how to make sure all those threads and loose ends – from both movies – could be brought together and tied up in just one film. And this is what Marvel have done in Iron Man 3 – very much a sequel to both films, though rooted firmly in the Iron Man franchise.

The story takes place directly in the aftermath of the ending of Avengers, and sees Tony Stark as Iron Man coming to terms with a changed world, his role in it – both as Stark and as Iron Man – his changing relationship with his business and Pepper and coming face to face with a threat both old and new that helped to create.

Without wanting to give too much away, the ending to Avengers was pretty earth-shattering: Humanity now knows that it is not alone in the universe, and that there are beings and organisations out in the Universe with designs and plans that call for the destruction or subjugation of Earth, and Humanity’s heroes must do all they can to protect Earth and is people. This metaphor is used often in the film: everything changed after New York. Of course the parallels between the events of the film and real life events that changed everything in New York are striking, and used to excellent effect. This is the backdrop for an identity crisis of sorts for Stark: how does a man whose powers and abilities are dependent on his mechanical suits fit into this new world where aliens, wizards, mutants and gods have “real” power?

This is answered in a clever way involving what might almost be called a journey of self-discovery. Stripped of his armour by his enemies, Stark is forced into confronting threats and issues without the backup of his Iron Man suits, and in doing so he discovered much more about himself and his character than he would have had he retained access to his advanced weapons. You might be wondering why Stark doesn’t just build a replacement suit, like he did in the first film: he does have one suit with him for most of the movie, the Type 45 – as a prototype armour suit, it often malfunctions at key moments. The malfunctions are often humorous, and sometimes plot-critical and help to increase the level of tension in set-pieces, however I do think the gimmick is a little over-used, particularly late on in the film where perhaps some more adventurous writing might have given the narrative a few more toys to use to achieve this effect.

Helping to add depth to the journey Stark takes through the course of this film is his changing relationship with Pepper Potts, and the development of her character, too. Again, without wanting to give too much away, its good to see her character mature into the confident CEO of Stark Industries, and when the action hots up, its nice to see a female lead be more than just a damsel in distress for the eponymous hero to rescue.

The villain of the piece – The Mandarin – will certainly look familiar to readers of the comics, but like a lot of other things, he has been given a face-lift for a 21st century audience. Part Islamist-extremist terrorist, part hacker he embodies all the things which terrify western leaders in this post-911 world. There are other changes which have been made to his character that those of who might consider themselves “purists” would find disagreeable, however the changes work well in the context of the film, and while I can understand that some people might object to the changes made to his character, I found them to be an interesting set of changes.

The action set-pieces of the film are, as you might expect from a big-budget comic book adaptation, excellent. There’s just enough time between them to allow the plot to advance and the characters to develop and grow, without the pace of the film becoming too plodding, and the scenes themselves are just long enough to accomplish their more action-oriented objectives without the film getting too bogged down in spectacle to deliver on its narrative.

That’s not to say that the film is without issues: there are a couple of the characters who are somewhat annoying, although that said, what they do isn’t strictly out of character for them, so it could be overlooked. There’s an annoying “child mascot” who appears about half-way through the film; I didn’t think he was too bad, as far as that character type goes, but there are certainly others who might think otherwise. His character pay-off at the end of the film is certainly worth seeing, though, no matter what you think of his character. The main issue I found with the film was that it used the gimmick of malfunctioning prototype technology to achieve dramatic tension a little too often. The trope was played straight for laughs of a few occasions, but I couldn’t help thinking that a film with as a big a budget as this should have had more toys in its plot-chest than this.

The Bottom Line: An excellent final instalment in the Iron Man franchise and a great follow-up to the Iron Man-centric events that took place in Avengers, Marvel have shown with this film how cross-universe plot continuity could be achieved, and have certainly set themselves a reasonable bar for follow-up films to Avengers and their other comic book character’s specific films. Not without a couple of faults, but on the whole an excellent film that everyone should enjoy. Definitely one to see at the cinema.