Fans might be showing unwarranted hate towards Robert Downey Jr.’s billion-dollar Iron Man movie after it’s villain plot failed to impress.

Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man trilogy is largely beloved by Marvel fans, yet the third film, Iron Man 3, continues to face unwarranted hate even today. Fans were not impressed with the big Mandarin twist in the film, with some of them feeling that Ben Kingsley was heavily underused in the film. However, the third Iron Man film is an underrated gem that fans often overlook, despite it being Downey Jr.’s first solo film to cross the billion-dollar mark.

Robert Downey Jr. in a still from Iron Man 3 | Credits: Marvel Studios

While the film had its flaws, Iron Man 3 doesn’t deserve the criticism it often receives. In many ways, the film has the essence of a true superhero film even more than the first two installments. While Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian wasn’t a particularly memorable villain, the film doesn’t seem intended to be a Tony Stark-versus-Big Baddie kind of story.

Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man 3 Is An Underrated Gem If You Look Deeper

Robert Downey Jr. in an action sequence in Iron Man 3 | Credits: Marvel Studios

Robert Downey Jr.‘s Iron Man 3 had a lot of things going right for it. Shane Black did a wonderful job, taking over from Jon Favreau as the director. Downey Jr. was at his best, portraying the anxieties of Tony Stark convincingly. And the film had some memorable action sequences, which fans don’t appreciate often enough.

The third film in the Iron Man trilogy is something fans would love to hate. Especially after the fact that it was the highest-grossing film in the trilogy with a $1.216 billion box office collection (via Box Office Mojo). Some fans believed that the film wasn’t deserving of the blockbuster success and even tried to pin the success on The Avengers‘ box office.

For one, people wanted to see more of Downey Jr. in action in the Iron Man suit and they didn’t get that. As Redditor r/thekrucha rightly said, the film was more about “Tony the engineer” rather than Iron Man. A few movies down the lane in the MCU, Downey Jr.’s Tony tells Tom Holland‘s Spider-Man, “If you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it.”

In Iron Man 3, Tony proves why he is a superhero without having the suit to protect him. During the action sequence before the “twist”, Tony unleashes the tech genius in him by devising an attack plan with tools available to him. It was reminiscent of the time when the character made a weaponized suit from scratch after being imprisoned by Ten Rings in the first film.

Many fans loved the film for how it was a portrayal of Tony Stark, a man grappling with his fears while also burdened with saving the world. The villains or the twist wasn’t the focus point of the story but rather it was about how Tony, not his suit, was the real superhero.

Iron Man 3‘s Villain Problem Rose From Fan Expectations

Robert Downey Jr. and Guy Pearce in Iron Man 3 | Credits: Marvel Studios

The one mistake Iron Man 3 made with the storyline was to introduce villains like Mandarin and Aldrich Killian. In the comic book, Mandarin is established as a ‘real’ Iron Man villain, who is a product of the Cold War and steeped in Chinese iconography.

Aldrich Killian appears as the villainous scientist in the comics as well, but he has no history with Iron Man. He’s portrayed as a scientist gone rogue after he distributes his experimental tech, Extremis, to a militia group. Killian in comics takes his own life after feeling guilty.

If the film had introduced Ben Kingsley under a different name and made Rebecca Hall’s Maya Hansen the villain instead of Guy Pearce‘s Aldrich Killian, as it truly was intended, the film wouldn’t have received the criticism. You can blame Isaac Perlmutter all you want if Killian’s motivations were so confusing to you after the film.

Pearce’s addition almost rendered Hall’s character ineffective in the film. Interestingly, some fans appreciated Kingsley and Pearce for executing their given roles perfectly. But again, the film may not have been about the villains at all. It is an underrated gem that is the real “proof that Tony Stark has a heart.”

Iron Man 3 is now available for streaming on Disney+.