I went in without having read anything and was distinctly underwhelmed. It was entertaining, had lots of snarky Downeyesque wise cracks, but the plot was really hazy. They PC'd up Mandarin, resulting in a completely muddled villain that had no real motivation and had one of the more transparent Deus Ex Machina climatic rescues I have seen in a while (I won't spoil completely) in a movie. The 3D was completely irrelevant and really added nothing. That said, I did enjoy it but most of my enjoyment was really about all the great digital FX....plot, characters, dialog...not so good.