Perhaps it’s the lack of a real supervillain. Perhaps it’s the deliberately small scale of the film (compared to Tony’s last outing, at least) with his anxiety attacks in the wake of the events of The Avengers- which is actually a good character point, Tony Stark bring the kind of rich, powerful, arrogant type who needs vulnerabilities to remain sympathetic, although Downey’s huge charisma does a huge job on its own. But ultimately the film feels entertaining but, well, insubstantial by MCU standards. And it never quite convinces how he gives up all the armour at the end.
There are some very good bits. The twist with the Mandarin is brilliant, and Ben Kingsley gives us a superb comic turn, and the Mandarin videos themselves are a superb visual riff on the iconography if the “War on Terror” which feels oddly retro six years later. Guy Pearce is ok as Killian, although his accent slips in places. Don Cheadle further cements himself as a mainstay. And there’s a lot of fun with armour, and various bits of it. But this film is unexpectedly inconsequential. Even the post-credits sequence is a bit of a damp squib.
