I think Bob's recommendation of this movie is based a lot on how it fits in the marvel movie universe and the problems it satisfies and I agree with his views on that. However as an Iron Man movie I think it was pretty bad.
Extremis was changed violently from it's role in the comics and was made a lot less interesting as a result. I could fill pages with all the ways the changes turned extremis into a less interesting plot device.
The multiple active Iron Man armor concept had a far more interesting introduction in the comics, in the form of the Argonaut Armors, which served to accentuate the same themes that the movie does. It's far more interesting because in the comics Tony built those armors to be useful for different purposes and each fights with unique combat styles, strengths, and weaknesses. While Tony ends that story pretty quick, which was only possible because of his intellect and quick thinking, it would have been nice to see the involved level of strategy and combat that was present in the comics carried over into this movie. Instead the armors generally seem to fight a lot more similarly in the movie and each armor individually seems to matter very little.
As a movie I think it holds up pretty well, but as an Iron Man film, and knowing we could have received so much better, I really would not have recommended seeing it in theaters.
