10 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About Iron Man

4. Iron Man 3 Is A Bad Movie

When Shane Black signed on to co-write and direct Iron Man 3, Marvel fans were justifiably excited. The director is famed for his work on the Lethal Weapon franchise, action films The Last Boy Scout and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and for contributing to 1987's Predator. The main takeaway from all of that was that Black was accustomed to working with larger-than-life characters, and when it comes to the comic book medium, they don't get much larger than Tony Stark.

Critical consensus dictates that Iron Man 3 is considered a good movie - and it is - but it was considered to be somewhat divisive by fans, who deemed Black's reimagining of the Mandarin to be inferior to the original character. It's important to be clear, however, that the original Mandarin of the comics just doesn't have a place anymore; he was a Fu Manchu-esque caricature who has no business with modern day Marvel, and of all the ways Black could have reimagined that villain, having Aldrich Killian be the 'real' version of the character was actually pretty clever.

The other great thing about Iron Man 3 is that it actually feels like a Shane Black movie. There's the buddy-cop dynamic shared between Rhodey and Stark, an honest appraisal of Stark's mental state after the Battle of New York that broaches themes surrounding PTSD, and Stark himself grows as a character by the time the credits begin to roll.

It's actually one of the MCU's better films, which is why it's such a shame that it's considered so divisive.