We all make mistakes, and when we change for the better, we hope things will improve. However, the demons we create in our past can return to haunt us. From getting blasted with his own missile in Afghanistan to saving New York City from an alien invasion, Iron Man Tony Stark has come a long way, evolving significantly since the first Iron Man (2008) movie. In Iron Man 3 (2013), Tony realizes his suits alone don’t define him; it’s his ability to innovate and his constant desire for improvement that make him unique. Let’s recap the story of Iron Man 3. If you haven’t seen the movie, I recommend watching it before reading ahead due to spoilers.
The story begins with Tony Stark narrating his life from New Year’s Eve 1999 in Bern, Switzerland. After a drunken speech at a conference, he spends the evening with genetic biologist Maya Hansen, the inventor of the Extremis Project, which enables instant healing and limb regeneration. At the party, a crippled scientist named Aldrich Killian approaches them, offering a position at his company, Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM). Tony sarcastically agrees to meet Killian on the rooftop but leaves him waiting.
Back in the present day, following the Battle of New York, Tony suffers from insomnia and panic attacks. He focuses on upgrading his suits, while a terrorist called “The Mandarin” claims responsibility for several explosions. The president assigns Col. James Rhodes, now in the rebranded Iron Patriot Suit, to neutralize the threat.
Killian visits Stark Industries, hoping to work with new CEO Pepper Potts on the Extremis project, but she rejects him. Suspicious, Happy Hogan, head of security at Stark Industries, follows Killian’s associate Eric Savin to the Chinese Theatre, where an explosion occurs due to experimental dosages of Extremis, severely injuring Happy.
The Mandarin takes responsibility for the explosion. Tony, outraged, challenges The Mandarin through the press, giving his home address to provoke a fight.
Tony researches Mandarin attacks and discovers a similar incident in Tennessee that predates any Mandarin attack. As he plans to prepare a flight plan for Tennessee, Maya Hansen comes to his house to warn him about the truth behind the Mandarin. Suddenly, helicopter gunships led by Savin attack Tony’s home. Tony falls into the sea in his Mark-42 suit, which flies him to Tennessee while he’s unconscious.
Waking up in rural Tennessee, Tony finds shelter in the garage of a young boy named Harley Keener. With the help of Harley, he investigates a local bombing. He discovers the bombings are linked to Killian’s AIM. Tony contacts Rhodey to access AIM’s servers as AIM redesigned the upgrades on his Iron Patriot Suit. Meanwhile, The Mandarin executes an accountant of Roxxon Oil Corporation on live television, compelling the president to send Rhodey to Pakistan, where he gets captured by an Extremis agent in his Iron Patriot Suit and brought back to the Mandarin’s headquarters. There, Killian gets Rhodey out of the armor and sends Eric in it to kidnap the president.
Killian kidnaps Pepper, intending to force Tony to fix the Extremis program’s flaws. Tony, with Harley and Jarvis’s help, infiltrates the Mandarin’s headquarters in Miami. He finds that the Mandarin is just an actor named Trevor Slattery, with Killian controlling everything behind the scenes. Killian used Maya’s research to cure his disabilities and expanded the research by experimenting on injured war veterans. The explosions happened due to faulty results of the experiment. The events were masked as terrorist attacks to cover up the real story.
Tony eventually gets captured and Killian tries to use Pepper to force him to fix the flaws of the Extremis program. Tony escapes with Rhodey, and learns that Killian plans to kill the president on live TV aboard an impounded , damaged oil tanker the Roxxen Norco, and make the vice president, who’s in on the plot, his puppet leader.
Reaching the oil tanker, Tony and Rhodey realize that the area is swarming with Extremis soldiers. Tony instructs Jarvis to call all the Iron Man suits. Rhodey saves the president and Tony goes to save Pepper. As he is about to save her, Killian gets in the way and she falls into a burning fire. Tony traps Killian in his Mark 42 suit, and instructs Jarvis to blow it up.
Killian survives the explosion and tries to kill Tony. Pepper, surviving the fall as a result of her new Extremis power, kills Killian and saves Tony.
Tony then destroys all his suits to prioritize his relationship with Pepper. The vice president and Slattery are arrested, and Tony stabilizes Pepper’s Extremis effects. He undergoes surgery to remove the shrapnel near his heart. He upgrades all the equipment in Harley’s garage as a reward. Tony throws the mini arc reactor into the sea, realizing that even without his suits, he is still “Iron Man.”
In a post-credit scene, Tony is shown narrating his story to Bruce Banner, who falls asleep during the tale. Tony continues to share his experiences, undeterred by Bruce’s lack of attention.
