How It Ended: After going all espionage-y on us to try and thwart evil scientist Aldrich Killian's plan to take over the United States, Tony Stark and buddy James Rhodes find themselves battling against an army of goons, before Killian is finally defeated and the President is saved. Eager to devote more time to his love interest Pepper Potts, Tony destroys all the Iron Man suits and has the shrapnel removed from near his heart - declaring that he'll always be Iron Man, he tosses the now-defunct arc reactor into the sea. How It Should Have Ended: Actually, all of that stuff is fine, except for the fact that - out of nowhere - it's just made easy for Tony to have the shrapnel removed from his heart. How, all of a sudden, is it possible for him to remove the shrapnel from his body, when we've spent two movies highlighting the fact that doing such a thing was far too risky and was - for all intents and purposes - completely impossible? On a whim, without much explanation, Tony can have this operation done out of nowhere by some random scientists we've never even met? Which also begs the question: why didn't he just have it done before if it was so darn easy? Wasn't the arc reactor killing him in Iron Man 2? Wouldn't it have made sense to undertake the procedure at a time when it really mattered? Sure, writer/director Shane Black needed a way to show us that Tony was going in a new direction with his life, but this just seems lazy on the part of the filmmakers. Wasn't blowing up all the Iron Man suits enough of a gesture? The ending would have worked far better without the shrapnel-based addition.
