The full trailer for Iron Man 3 has hit the Internet, and it’s actually kind of depressing.

Don’t get me wrong, it looks cool, but it also looks very, very depressing. Don’t they know that it’s the second act where the hero is supposed to be at their darkest? I fear that it may be too depressing. I’m sure everybody remembers the awesome Iron Man flying with jets moment from the very first trailer for Iron Man. That’s the kind of thing that gets people pumped for movies.

Not Tony Stark having an existential crisis. Or maybe a mid-life crisis?

Normally it might work, but I’m fairly certain I read somewhere that Marvel and Disney aren’t going to do Devil in a Bottle, the legendary Stark alcoholism story. So all of his depression comes from the awesomeness of the things he saw and did in The Avengers. At least that’s what he says in the trailer. Nice reference to the previous film, by the way. And that last shot is harrowing, but I dunno…are people going to respond positively to a dark, somber Iron Man film?

This isn’t Batman

We also got to see some of the major villain in this film, the Mandarin. While I liked his narration, I don’t think it had the villainous oomph that it needed to really sell this guy’s menace. It could have done with some more, I dunno, outright villainy maybe. Still, I’m sure we can count on Ben Kingsley to pull it off. And for the record, I have zero problem with the Mandarin not being Chinese and not being called the ‘Mandarin’, if that’s the case. I’ve thought that was a silly name all the way back to the 90s Iron Man cartoon…which I’m sad has never been revived or put on DVD following the new success of the Iron Man character.

Oh well. Here’s Kingsley as the ring-slinger:

Hoboish, but I like it