2. Iron Man 3
Did It Succeed?: In a word, yes. $1.2 billion at the box office, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time, and 78% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Why It's Disappointing: Iron Man 3's marketing hype made much of the fact that Ben Kingsley was playing a creepy, mysterious villain called The Mandarin, a threat more dangerous than Tony Stark has ever faced. However, the film implodes mid-way by revealing that Kingsley's character is, in fact, an actor employed to
pretend to be the Mandarin, ahead of the reveal that Guy Pearce's Aldrich Killian is the
"real" Mandarin. Comic fans were angry that a beloved villain had been turned into a joke, and others were simply mad that the film didn't deliver what it advertised. Though the film has its entertaining moments, it's hard to shake the irritation of this scenario, as well as the general predictability of the "fall and rise again" narrative arc that's so overused in blockbuster movies at the moment.