Tony's Malibu mansion and many of the suits of armor are destroyed in an attack and Marvel Studios producer Kevin Feige revealed that this happens in the first act of the film and sets up the rest of the movie.
"You’ve seen in the trailers that there’s an attack on Tony’s house. So by the end of the first act of 'Iron Man 3,' his house is gone. His technology is gone. All he has is a barely functioning, prototype suit that, soon after he escapes from the house that’s destroyed, is not functioning at all. So Tony finds himself in the middle of the United States of America, in Rose Hill, Tennessee, completely out of his element. A guy who lives in Malibu and goes to Monaco and gallivants in Manhattan in the middle of Rose Hill, Tennessee, with a suit not working, doing an investigation about the villain known as the Mandarin, to try to figure out where he is. Tony believes there are clues here that are going to lead him to find where the Mandarin is, so he drags the broken suit into a shed that he finds and takes an axe and opens it up. It turns out that he is in the little workshop of this young boy named Harley."
Based on this and all the footage we've seen in the trailers, you can formulate a good guess about the structure of Iron Man 3 from this answer alone. Undoubtedly, there will be plenty of surprises left, but that this information has been revealed is pretty exciting.
An element of Iron Man 3 that has long been rumored is that Gwyneth Paltrow's character Pepper Potts would put on an Iron Man suit in the film, much like she did in the comic books. They confirm that this will in fact happen in the film.
"There were talks of Pepper getting in the suit at the end of 'Iron Man 2,' but Marvel wasn’t ready to do it yet....I know Robert was really interested in having Pepper do more in this movie, and it was also a factor in me coming back and getting to do things that were a little bit more fun and different and a little bit more adventurous. It would’ve still been nice, but it would’ve been very much the same thing just to be buttoned-up Pepper, and in this movie there’s a whole different experience of her."
When asked what wearing the suit was like, Paltrow replied: "I didn’t mind wearing the suit at all. I thought it was light and perfectly comfortable and my children thought I was extremely cool. They were here on a day where I was in it, so they were trying it on and when my son saw me in the suit, he had the biggest eyes, so it was definitely worth it."
Another new suit that we've seen in the trailers is Don Cheadle's brand new Iron Patriot armor. Kevin Feige spilled the beans on how that comes to pass in the film and Rhodey's journey in the movie.
"What we learn in the beginning of 'Iron Man 3' is that they’ve made an arrangement. Tony has let Rhodey have this suit; he’s using it in conjunction with the US Government. So, at the beginning of 'Iron Man 3,' we see that the President has asked Rhodey as War Machine to get a new paint job and take on the new moniker of the Iron Patriot in order to do American business and be the American hero as opposed to The Avengers or Iron Man himself, who is sort of a separate entity... In a way it becomes a buddy action film, in the third act, where they team up. Neither of them have a suit at a certain point in the movie and they really team up in a great, sort of old- fashioned action movie way and Don and Robert have such an amazing rapport."
Another little detail that fans have been wondering about is how the organization A.I.M. fits into the film, which was confirmed to be a part of the movie last summer, Feige mentions that Guy Pearce's character Aldrich Killian is the head of the group in the movie.
"Killian heads a brain-trust organization called AIM that is developing Extremis, which is something that taps into human DNA and is able to reprogram it and regenerate limbs and enhance strength and cure wounds. But it also could change the whole world, which is what Killian intends to do with it."
One thing many noticed about Kingsley's Mardarin is his "Captain America" tattoo on his neck. This apparently is a running theme for the character, wherein he takes American propoganda and uses it to his own devices.
"Shane Black had an idea of making him somebody whose background is unknown," said Feige, "we don’t know where he’s from at first, but he seems to be some kind of military officer that has gone off the reservation. He is starting to pull all of this iconography and symbolism from other cultures to his own ends to use them as symbols to pervert the symbol of the United States. He utilizes the moniker of the Mandarin and robes with dragons on them and uses South American sort of guerilla tactics to create this aura of fear of his terror organization. The Mandarin is sort of a very frightening, modern-day terrorist who has taken terror motifs from all over the world to use to his own ends. It was a very cool and relevant and scary idea."
A final thing that has captured a lot of viewers attention from the latest trailer is when Air Force One is attacked and people are falling to the ground, if you want to know how Tony saves them, then read on.
"Our writers had a great idea," said Feige, "which played to the theme of putting Tony in a situation that you don’t know how he’s going to get out of. Shane and Drew’s idea was basically to throw 13 people out of an airplane and have Jarvis tell Tony he can only carry four of them. So how in the world, as they’re plummeting to their death, is Iron Man going to be able to save them all?
"And they came up with this notion of Barrel of Monkeys, this Hasbro game, where you connect all the monkeys together and see how many of these little plastic monkeys you can latch together by their fingers. And Tony begins to fly down and begins to grab onto people and tells those people to grab onto the next person. And suddenly with this great show of teamwork you have 13 people all latched onto each other with Iron Man blowing his repulsors to stop their fall. "
@ this movie