- Snow falling in the woods
- Iron Man Mark XLVII (47) falls to the ground in woods (it's snowing), the light on its chest blinking
- Tony Stark voice-over: "Got a lot of apologies to make"
- Iron Man Mark XLVII takes off helmet and we see Tony Stark's injured face
- *Marvel logo*
- *Paramount logo*
- Tony Stark walking out of what appears to be a hospital, and is swarmed by reporters
- Tony Stark voice-over: "Nothing has been the same since New York"
- Tony Stark seen in his house with the old Iron Man suits behind him; the glove on his Mark XLVII suit flies onto his hand.
- Tony Stark voice-over: "They experience things, and then they're over"
- Tony Stark seen sitting on his bed, his Mark XLVII suit in pieces on the floor, someone (Pepper?) walking away in the distance on the left
- Tony Stark voice-over: "I can't sleep"
- Shot of Colonel Rhodes in an office
- Tony Stark voice-over: "And when I do, I have nightmares"
- A man and a boy seen in some ruins where a memorial has been created
- There are marks of people on the wall and the man runs his hand over one of them
- Tony Stark voice-over: "Honestly, there's 100 people that want to kill me"
- Two helicopters flying
- Aldrich Killian, played by Guy Pearce
- Iron Man Mark XLVII suit kneeling and looking up, with all the old Iron Man suits behind it (the Mark IV is missing its helmet)
- We see that Tony Stark has been talking to Pepper Potts
- Tony: "I hope that I can protect the one thing that I can't live without"; we see the Mark XLVII turned on behind him and Tony is wearing a headset on his head to control the suit (the Mark IV has its helmet now by the way, though the glass in front of it has a hole); Tony also has a bandage on his hand
- In bed, Pepper looks at Tony concerned (maybe trying to wake him up?) and the mark XLVII suit grabs her and turns her forward
- *This Summer*
- The old Mark VII suit is blown up, followed by the Mark VI suit
- The Mandarin (played by Ben Kingsley) takes off his hood; we see a tattoo on the back of his neck that looks like Captain America's shield, but with an "A" in the center. The A looks like the symbol for "Anarchy", so there is speculation it is symbolic in its meaning.
- Mandarin voice-over: "Ladies..."
- Dr. Maya Hansen (played by Rebecca Hall) on the floor
- War Machine in his new "Iron Patriot" color scheme suit lands and startles some secret service men, and then walks through a procession with military men on either side
- Mandarin voice-over: "...children..."
- Someone with a tattered pants leg and bare foot is shown walking through burning rubble; people are speculating this is a Hulk cameo however it's been denied that Hulk will appear in this movie; also considering Tony's mansion will get blown up, it's probably Tony shown in this scene
- Someone puts their hand on someone else's shoulder, and we see Happy Hogan bloody on the floor in all the rubble
- Mandarin voice-over: "...sheep..."
- Aldrich Killian kisses Pepper Pott's cheek
- Tony Stark is in an operating room and someone puts a breathing mask on him
- A military personnel looks out the window of a plane and we see the Iron Man Mark XLVII punch through and then it blasts the guy
- Mandarin voice-over: "Some people call me a terrorist"
- We see a giant hole in the side of the plane and many people flying out of it; it's rumored this may include the President
- The Iron Man Mark XLVII flies and grabs a falling flight attendant
- Pepper seemingly in pain, stuck in some sort of contraption
- Mandarin voice-over: "I consider myself a teacher"
- Pepper holding a damaged Iron Man helmet with a big crack in the middle
- Close-up of the Ten Rings on the Mandarin's hands (his source of power from the comics)
- A damaged Iron Man Mark XLVII suit pins Tony Stark to the ground in his mansion, with rubble everywhere
- Some red-head pins Tony to the wall, trying to kiss him it seems
- War Machine (in Iron Patriot colors) smashes a man on a table
- Iron Man Mark XLVII's eyes and chest glow in the dust
- The Mandarin loads a gun
- Mandarin voice-over: "Lesson number one"
- Two helicopters fly towards Tony's mansion and turrets on their sides open up
- Mandarin voice-over: "Heroes..."
- Tony and Pepper look out the window, concerned
- Mandarin voice-over: "...there is no such thing"
- The Mandarin looks up
- Three helicopters seen, and they start firing missiles at Tony's mansion
- The impact of the missiles Tony and Pepper to go flying back (there's a giant bunny thing in the background as well... weird)
- A chunk of Tony's mansion starts to break apart
- The Iron Man Mark XLVII slides downwards as the mansion breaks apart, sparks flying from his glove
- A chunk of Tony's mansion falls into the ocean
- More missiles impact as more of the mansion falls
- The Iron Man Mark XLVII tries to hold on, but is swept into the water and entangled in wires
- We see its arms trying to reach to upwards, but to no avail
- The Iron Man Mark XLVII is seen lying at the bottom of the ocean as a huge chunk of Tony's mansion comes crashing down onto it
- *Iron Man 3* (the lights in the logo go out)
- Tony Stark is seen dragging the Mark XLVII suit while it's snowing
- *May 3, 2013* (the lights turned back on to reveal the release date)

Well, there’s going to be a big fight sequence with The Mandarin, who’s the main villain, which will involve none other than forty different iron man suits. There’s an amazing rescue where The Mandarin basically wants to bring down the American government and kill the President, and he launches an attack on Air Force One. All of them – the President and his men and staff – get sucked out of the plane, and Iron Man rescues them by forming this amazing human chain in the sky.

There’s some pretty spectacular stuff that goes on. There’s an amazing sequence where he has this rooftop house that he builds to store all his Iron Man suits, and it gets attacked by The Mandarin and these gunships [...] I was shocked to discover there are like forty Iron Man suits written into this feature in various ways…so that’s going to be pretty impressive. But apparently he needs this Iron Man army to go up against The Mandarin’s forces.

Thor becomes reunited with Jane who becomes possessed by a Dark Spirit, which is connected with the Dark Elves; a race the Asgardians have fallen out with many years beforehand [...] The Dark Elves attack Asgard, and they take a huge hit. So Thor has to rebuild Asgard by putting together an army to go and take the battle to the Dark Elves and defeat them. But the only way he can do this is – he needs to cross over to the Dark World, and the only person who has access to the dark side of Asgard is his old brother Loki, who at the beginning of the film is locked up in prison.

So what happens is Thor basically has to negotiate this truce with Loki, and he goes on this great trek with Jane, all three of them. They go to this far side of Asgard, which is being shot in Iceland, where they train and assemble an army to go and attack the Dark Elves’ world.

But the exclusive twist…is that one of the things that happens during the Asgardian attack is that Thor’s mother gets killed. So it becomes like a vengeance thing. And they were keeping very tight-lipped about what actually happens with Loki, you don’t know whether he redeems himself or he’s still the bad egg.

At the end of Avengers 2 (either in the last act or in post-credits scene), Hulk is carried off into space by the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the Illuminati, presumably because he gets out of control. Then in Phase 3 along with the Ant-Man and Doctor Strange movies, Hulk will finally be getting another solo movie. But this one will be based on the Planet Hulk story. And this will all lead into Avengers 3 with Hulk returning to Earth with a World War Hulk story adaptation. I don't know anything about the Illuminati or Planet Hulk/World War Hulk... but sounds intriguing!

At some point during Iron Man 3, Tony tells Jarvis to be on alert for any signals from space (possibly to be on the alert after the attack in The Avengers). In the post-credits scene, Jarvis will get a SOS message from Star-Lord (from Guardians of the Galaxy). He's in full mask, but visibly damaged. Start tells Jarvis to prepare the space armor with the metal that the envoy from Wakanda sent over. Start flies into space with the suit saying, "This time... I'm ready". Jarvis asks him how long he'll be in space and he replies, "I'll be back".

This is very interesting because it's a tease for the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Supposedly, that movie will take place during/after Iron Man 3. And apparently the post-credits scene for Guardians of the Galaxy will have Tony Stark appear. Supposedly Thor will also cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy. But what's also interesting is that Start mentions Wakanda... which is where Black Panther is from, seemingly hinting that a Black Panther movie is in the works in the future possibly.

Other interesting tidbits? Zeke Stane (grandson of Obidiah Stane and villain in the Iron Man comics) is namedropped. MODOK is mentioned in the files from Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.), and that's another villain. Supposedly the Mandarin survives this movie as well. Dr. Maya Hansen from this movie gets scarred and supposedly will end up as Madam Masque, another villain. So maybe they're gearing up for some movie with all of them teaming up? Who knows.

What's even more interesting is that Stephanie Szostak's character is the daughter of Vernon Van Dyne... meaning she is Janet a.k.a. Wasp. So we'll potentially have Wasp in our Avengers 2 line-up.

Ben Kingsley is playing the Mandarin, right? Wrong. He's a fake in the movie, with Guy Pearce's character Aldrich Killian being the real Mandarin.

Tony Stark is talking about his problems and Bruce Banner tries to explain to him that he's not that kind of doctor.

The movie has an interesting pace to it. It coasts along, I would say. It never really drags. It's also pretty funny. There is lots of the typical humor found in the Iron Man movies, so that continued. The new characters were interesting. Maya Hansen I found didn't really do much to the story. Aldrich Killian was a great new villain, and more on The Mandarin in a second. The Extremis soldiers were interesting looking. I like that they can include more and more kind of supernatural stuff in these movies now and it makes sense. I mean, these guys weren't aliens or anything, but the glowing fiery stuff didn't seem odd in the context of the movie so that was good.

The Mandarin was quite interesting. SPOILER ALERT: Ben Kingsley is not The Mandarin. His character (Trevor I think it was), is simply an actor hired by Aldrich Killian to be the face of The Mandarin. It's Killian that really is the true Mandarin, the mastermind behind it all. Some people, mainly comic book fans, hated this big twist. I found it enjoyable and it was rather funny. Props to Marvel for keeping that big spoiler well under-wraps until the movie was screened. Oh, and one other minor thing. In the opening sequence in 1999 I think it was, I loved how they included the guy who was in the cave with Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie. I was not expecting that, and it was awesome seeing him there. Really brought things together since he mentioned in the first movie that he had met Tony Stark a while back.

This movie had plenty of great action as well. Most of the big Iron Man suit action scenes were in the end. There is the cool sequence that happens when Tony's mansion is blown up, but other than that most of the suit action we see is in the big fight in the end. And it's pretty awesome seeing him jump from suit to suit. Don Cheadle got more time to shine as Rhodes, who is now Iron Patriot. But still not too much. I think he actually fought more out of suit than in suit, which is both cool and lame. I liked seeing Rhodes fight, that was awesome. But it would have been nice to see more action from Iron Patriot. Heck, even Pepper got more action in the suit than he did. Which by the way was awesome! She kicked serious butt in the suit at the end, and basically stopped Killian. Pretty cool to see that.

But really, the biggest thing that stood out to me was that this was a Tony Stark movie. And yes, I used Tony Stark instead of Iron Man for a reason. The Iron Man suits are throughout the movie... but the focus is on Tony as a person. He makes decisions and fights quite often without the suit. And there are plenty of sequences where he may only use part of the suit, like the glove. By the end of the movie, he blew up all the Iron Man suits and takes the Ark Reactor out of his chest. The character arc for Tony throughout all the movies is great. I love that the events of The Avengers have affected him and he has anxiety attacks from those. But more importantly, I remember the line from The Avengers where Captain America asks Stark what he is without the suit. And this movie fully answers that: Tony Stark IS Iron Man. The suits are an extension of himself. And I really liked that, that's a great notion.

In terms of what's coming next in the pipeline from Marvel, this movie really doesn't tease anything. Like Marvel have been saying all along, this movie is pretty self-contained. There are some references to the events of The Avengers when Tony has his panic attacks, and SHIELD is of course name-dropped here and there. But that's it. No cameos or any teases or anything. The most we get is the post-credits scene, which is a fun bit of dialogue between Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. But it doesn't tease anything, it just shows that they've kept in touch. The biggest thing is the ending of the movie makes me wonder what happens next for Tony. The Ark Reactor is now removed from his chest and his suits are all gone. He can of course make more, but how will they be powered? It's curious that the credits say "Tony Stark will return" rather than "Iron Man will return". I have no doubt we'll see Iron Man in the future, but this is showing the emphasis they have now on Tony. And with his story wrapped up pretty nicely, I wouldn't be surprised if The Avengers 2 was his final appearance. Not sure where they'd go next for Iron Man 4.