First one was classic. Characterization and dynamics were spot on minus rhodey. Roxxon in the background when Iron Monger was shooting the missile made me wish for spiderman, which we're now getting
2 is a fun flick but tony's arc suffered by marvel shoehorning alot of setups, and alot of beats were rehashes of iron-man 1. Felt like a younger brother imitating his older brother's swag instead of finding his own.
They sought to correct that with IM3. In translating the Marvel Universe to film the mechanics have to be right, and while mandarin is an iron man villain, in the comics you can zero in on a solo Iron Man story where he's responding to a Mandarin terrorist attack, and enjoy it without asking wtf cap and shield are doing, or "why this isn't on their radar and why they aren't making guest appearances to help stop this nationwide threat?" As a comic book fan you can ignore that and not be offended by the logic of the Marvel universe and still give the story high marks. In film continuity that kind of logistical inconsistency won't take, film critics are anal retentive and will never let you hear the end of it. So they had to construct the Mandarin in a way where Tony and his supporting cast being the only ones going after him makes complete sense for a film. Given those parameters what they came up with was great, even though a part of me was dissappointed initially lmao.