Why Shane Black’s "Iron Man 3" actually good

Iron Man 3 is one of the most successful Marvel Studios movies ever made, but it’s also one of the most divisive. The fi...

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Iron Man 3 is one of the most successful Marvel Studios movies ever made, but it’s also one of the most divisive. The film scored over $1.2 billion at the worldwide box office, and thus far it’s only been bested by Avengers movies and Black Panther.It was one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2013, effectively serving as a sequel to the 2012 smash-hit Marvel’s The Avengers. Fans were eager to see how Marvel Studios would continue the MCU storyline now that the heroes had finally met up. Could they create a standalone film where fans weren’t constantly asking where Thor/Captain America/Hulk were?At the behest of Downey, whose career resurgence really began with Black’s directorial debut Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Shane Black was hired to co-write and direct Iron Man 3 in February 2011, still over a year away from the release of The Avengers. As the one who started it all, Iron Man was the easy pick for who should follow-up the MCU’s first culmination event, and it was no easy task.Indeed, thematically the crux of Iron Man 3 is a sort of PTSD story about Tony feeling powerless without his suit. After Iron Man, Tony felt he was king of the mountain. But in The Avengers, he met a super soldier, a monster, an assassin, and a pair of literal gods.