NON SPOILERY: It was extremely good, possibly better than the first, even. Highly recommended to anyone who likes superhero movies, and it makes me feel a lot better about Thor 2 (in the “good sequels are possible” sense), so.

SPOILERY:

  1. Okay, that is the FIRST EVER kid sidekick that was an asset to a movie, and not an annoyance. God, that whole part was so great, and I never thought I’d say that about a “kid helps out a superhero” sequence.

  2. I really really really really liked what they did with the Mandarin. I hadn’t had it spoiled for me, so it was actually a surprise, and it worked super-well in its own terms, and then also redeemed the apparent dodgy handling of the Mandarin that seemed likely from the trailers.

  3. Don Cheadle didn’t work for me in IM2, but here I totally bought him as Rhodey. So A++ for that.

  4. The amount of Marvel stuff they’ve brought in — extremis, AIM (WHERE ARE THE BEEKEEPER SUITS), Iron Patriot — is kind of insane. I mean, obvs a lot of it is transformed (the Iron Patriot was Norman Osborn in the comics), but still.

  5. A thing I think was not obvious, and which I’m therefore unsure about myself, is whether Stark got treated with finished extremis and now no longer needs the suit to become Iron Man, because he can just make it himself out of his body. That SEEMED to be the case, but they didn’t make it 100% clear, so I might just be projecting comic knowledge onto the movie.