Iron Man 3 Premiere

On Thursday, 18 February, I was lucky enough to attend the Iron Man 3 Premiere in London at Leicester Square. The great people at Showcase Cinemas had a competition on their twitter account to win a pair of tickets to the premiere - and I won them! Shock of the century, I never win anything. Showcase Cinemas are a branch across the UK, with a few "luxury" locations as well - you can find their website here. Definitely check them out next time you're up for a trip to the cinema, and follow them on twitter - they regularly do competitions for tickets and such.

Like I said, thanks to this lucky happenstance and the helpful people at Showcase Cinemas, I was able to take my friend Mary along with me. Neither of us had ever been to a proper movie premiere before, so we were pretty excited! I do have to say that I am a massive fan of superhero movies, especially Marvel. I've seen pretty much every Marvel movie that's come out since the first X Men film in 2000. I have been to plenty of midnight releases (The Avengers, The Amazing Spider Man, etc.), but nothing like this.

Mary and I got into London about 2 hours before the premiere and got dinner (which I'll post about later), and made our way to Leicester Square. It was packed! We had to wait for a few minutes before the doors opened, but when it was time to go into the theatre, we were led onto the red carpet. Robert Downey Jr was just a couple feet away from us (very exciting! but he's shorter than expected in person). It was pretty surreal, so of course we needed a picture to document our first red carpet!

I wore a Henry Holland dress and American Eagle trench, Marry wore a dress from Topshop.

Once we found our seats and settled in (after Mary ran into Stanley Tucci), we watched the rest of the red carpet on the screen. We also got to check out our goodies...

Iron Man 3D glasses...I totally kept them.

Soon enough it was showtime - the director and cast came out to introduce the film and talk about making the film. It was pretty cool, but at that point I was ready for the movie to begin.

Blurry, but I was far back, whoops.

In short...I really enjoyed it! Might be my favorite film in the Iron Man franchise thus far. It's already out in the UK, and will be in the US on the 30th, so I think I can go ahead and give a little review without giving away any spoilers. This movie had all the usual bits that make Iron Man so great - crazy intense action sequences, the almost separate characterization of the Iron Man suits themselves, and of course snarky bad boy Tony Stark played by Robert Downey Jr. That casting alone makes every Iron Man movie for me, but I thought the third installment brought something totally new to the series. It took a more focused look at Tony Stark as a person and how he's struggling with some PTSD after New York (The Avengers) - I loved this new approach to Tony. Sir Ben Kingsley plays the "villain" in the film, called The Mandarin. This character stole the show in some ways for me - I really liked the way he's presented, and the entire sub-plot of the "terrorist-style" attacks was full of surprises and plot twists that were as quick and shocking as Downey's one liners. Overall, I think any fan of Iron Man and superheroes in general would thoroughly enjoy this film. 

If anyone has already seen it, let me know what you think!

Jane xx