9. Tone The Comedy Down A Tad
Don't get me wrong, I love the humour in the Iron Man films; it helps differentiate them from the self-seriousness of the Dark Knight trilogy, yet even in IM3 , easily the darkest film in the series, there's a relentless level of wise-cracking that repeatedly deflates the intensity and the tension of the scenes we watching. It's hard to believe that anything bad is going to happen to Tony or anyone he loves - and at the end of the day, it doesn't - because he just loves making funnies too damn much. Though these films don't reach for serious that often, it becomes troublesome when they do, because the tone is off-kilter. Iron Man 4 should follow the more immaculately-conceived arc of The Avengers, which balanced comedy with drama (namely Coulson's demise) extremely well; I'll put that down to the script-writing genius of Joss Whedon.