[TurnedTheCorner]

After thinking on it, I think I liked the Mandarin twist. It was still weird as hell, but I liked it more than I didn't. I liked that AIM was thrown in. I was OK with all of the suit variants - I'm sure some 10 year-old could tell me the names of all of them, what they do, and which one is better than which other one, as he proudly displays the action figures he has for all of them. That's OK. The Malibu house destruction was an impressive set piece. I liked the banter between Tony and the kid in Tennessee.

I think I didn't like the Home Depot fueled 007 invasion of the Miami compound that led up to the Mandarin twist. I also don't think I liked the buddy cop rescue of the president sequence. I didn't really understand what Extremis was or why it blew up some people and made other people simply hot. I didn't like the armor not working whenever it was convenient for it not to work. Pepper in Iron Man armor was weird. I didn't get what the botanist chick's deal was. I didn't really like the whole "Yeah and then my shrapnel was fine so I threw the arc reactor in the ocean" thing either.

I dunno, there was just a whole lot of weirdness in this one. It's OK that it was different in tone than the movies that led up to The Avengers, but different doesn't have to be weird. This was too weird for me to say it was good as the other movies.