Lol that this movie was satire. Downey has always played this character with irreverance. This was a straight-up comic book movie that did contain a rather unexpected twist. One that I liked. I did have a moment of concern that they shat on ever being able to use Iron Man's (far and away) biggest enemy. However he would be complex to give a backstory to (that he's empowered by 10 alien rings) and even his name is risky to try to pull off as a straight-up villain today; he does seem dated. Extremis, on the other hand, is the hot new villain of the future.
I certainly give it a "Go see in a theater" rating. Below the first Iron Man but comfortably above #2.
Also, for 2 more days, comixology has some Iron Man comics on sale. The arc that introduced Extremis is simply outstanding, for both art and story. From the link to Iron Man on the main page, look for the series named "Iron Man" (not the one with "Invincible" in the title) and choose #1-6.
ETA: For the first time, I didn't think the payoff from the post-credit scene outweighed having to sit through very long credits. I would have been content seeing this as a deleted scene off the dvd in a few months. The fanboy in me was hoping to see a glimpse of Thanos' goings on.
Did anybody feel like you needed to have seen Avengers to follow this movie? This guy seems to think so and thinks it will hurt ticket sales.
http://www.hollywood.com/news/movies...-marvel-movies
Hell no. I know someone like me is the villain of this guy's article, the lifelong Marvel fan that knows the nuances inside and out, but if someone feels they're in the dark because Tony is suffering PTSD from a "New York event" which is explained as an alien invasion during which Tony went through a portal to another dimension, then indeed, these movies are not for them.
I'm sure the creative teams between the comics and movies have at most a 1% overlap, but Marvel has been dealing with this for decades. Sometimes well, sometimes not so much. It is a guiding principle when writing a comic that a new reader should be able to pick that issue up and be able to follow the story. Again, that doesn't always work well. In the context of the movies though, this continuity is fairly simple. The one minute (max) dedicated to flashback was sufficient this time. A bigger problem would be for Marvel to cater to the article's author and his simple-minded friends and show 10+ minutes of flashback and exposition.
Eventually, and the movies are a
looooong way away from this, the history and continuity trap the creative teams in a bind. They spend more time trying to fit in a story than coming up with a good story. DC's solution has been to nuke everything from orbit, I've actually lost track of how many times they've done this, 3 at the least. Marvel tends to just rewrite history that doesn't fit well. Take Iron Man for example, his first origin story had him captured by Vietnamese, then eventually updated to the first Gulf War then Afghanistan, all while maintaining key story arcs (e.g. alcoholism and Armor Wars) as part of his history.
Bottom line, it is a danger that a convoluted continuity could eventually adversely affect the box office of Marvel movies. They're not there yet and hopefully, Marvel has learned from their excesses of the 90s that they have to avoid it.