Even though it’s been 10 years since the first installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Two released, which came with the added burden of being the franchise’s maiden motion picture since The Avengers, the merits of Iron Man 3 have never truly been settled upon.
In one corner you’ve got the mountainous volume of defenders who’ll back it to the hilt as one of the superhero sandbox’s finest entries, with Robert Downey Jr. giving his best performance as Tony Stark in a story that completely subverted and upended expectations by way of the infamous Mandarin twist.
In the other dwell the ardent detractors who despise Shane Black’s threequel with every fiber of their being, conspiring to create a maelstrom of polarizing opinions that continue to rage a decade later. Fanning the flames even further, though, Iron Man 3‘s 10th anniversary has even seen it pinpointed as the beginning of the MCU’s gradual downfall, which led directly to the Multiverse Saga offering up all of its worst-reviewed film and television projects ever.
Obviously, it’s hard to trace a straight line from Iron Man 3 right through to the abominations of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Secret Invasion, but you understand the sentiment. Marvel has taken less and less risks than ever moving forward, and even when it does, you end up with something like Eternals securing its first-ever Rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Is RDJ’s final solo adventure really to blame, though? Well, that’s entirely up for debate and open to interpretation, but one thing we can guarantee is that the Iron Man 3 discourse is a million miles from being over.