I really enjoyed Iron Man 3 and I agree with everything you said. Iron Man 3 excelled in giving us creative action set-pieces all through out the movie, playing with who's wearing the suit, the suit malfunctions, the suit is worn partially, the suit is remote-controlled, there's no suit, etc. I thought it was fun. But the final action sequence was completely mishandled. They just threw everything and the kitchen-sink in and set it all to blaze. It was a mess and it wasn't rewarding or fulfilling in any narrative way. You mentioned that the resolution of the Tony arc was rushed. I agree, by that point the movie was so much into the Lethal Weapon style of fun action that it forgot about Riggs' depression.Ralancian said:Sorry IM3 completely fails in third act, it's a great movie up to that point but it just fails. They've been setting up all movie that Tony is suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress and it's directly linked to his worry that something will happen to Pepper. Which is handled brilliantly until the point he thinks he's lost Pepper you'd expect some level of crisis of confidence or the stress to inflict him during the final battle which he then overcomes however there's zero hint of that within the film he just acts his normal self and 'saves the day'.
Also added into the fact the final act special effect's montage with tons of different suits has very few individual suit moments and just is a bunch of blur's hitting one another. Great set up very poorly executed.
All and all the sloppy third act didn't ruin the rest of the movie for me. I still rather enjoyed the funny banter, the clever action, but it did end up feeling a bit underwhelming, inconsequential coming off The Avengers. It just didn't know how to end.