“Iron Man 3” is fantastic from start to finish, there’s no two ways about it, while I did not find it as awesome as “The Avengers” or quite as entertaining as “Iron Man 2,” it was full of adventure and explosion from beginning to end.I liked the frame story aspect of the movie. It begins with Tony Stark a story, which begins with New Year’s Eve 1999. Stark is approached about a new company that he not interested in. SPOILER ALERT: Of course this comes back to bite him.

Stark has trouble sleeping, ever since the events in New York, ala “The Avengers.” The result is a plethora of new Iron Man suits, because he spends all his time in “tinkering.”

Of course newly crowned, “World’s Most Beautiful Woman,” (ehh) Pepper Potts, has a few issues with her boyfriend being in his shop all the time. No spoiler alert there, that’s just common sense.

The Mandarin is the new villain, SPOILER ALERT: and I use the term loosely, played brilliantly by Sir Ben Kingsley. I must say that he does an excellent job of being scary and comical. Trust me the level of his character steals many scenes.

SPOILER ALERT: Stark deals with the one of the Mandarin attacks figuratively hitting a little to close to home, which leads to an attack literally hitting to close to home, not really a spoiler since you can see his house get blown up in every commercial for the movie.

There’s some soul searching a brief Stan Lee cameo, much better than his cameo in “The Avengers,” but not as good as the one in “The Amazing Spider Man.” Of course it doesn’t beat Wolverine’s in “X-Men: First Class,” but I’m not sure anything ever will.

I will say that I found it hard to not compare this movie to the previous Iron Men, and of course “The Avengers,” but while I thought the others were better, it was more a product of them being so good, not this one underachieving.

I felt that it definitely lived up to my expectations, while the others surpassed them. I recommend seeing it, in 3-D of course. Just beware, movie theaters are hip to the recycled glasses, they are checking at the door. I guess it’s true what they say, “Haters Gonna Hate!”