If you were somehow nervous Shane Black (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) couldn’t handle directing Iron Man 3, it’s time to relax. Right before the Super Bowl, Marvel invited a number of domestic and international reporters to a special screening of footage from the highly-anticipated sequel. Normally when they do footage screenings, it’s a sizzle reel, meaning you see brief moments from a number of scenes. However, for Iron Man 3, the presentation started with Kevin Feige (the President of Production at Marvel Studios) telling us what happens in the first 20 minutes of the film, and then he showed us what happens in the following 15 minutes. We saw a ton of action, heard some fantastic Shane Black dialogue, learned what kind of impact The Avengers had on Tony Stark, and witnessed the power of the Mandarin. When the lights finally came up, I was smiling ear to ear and desperately wanting to see more.

Continued after the jump.

Since I know most of you don’t want to be spoiled, I’m not going to do a bullet point recap of what we saw. Reporters might do that on other sites, but I’m of the opinion that if you’re definitely going to see a movie, why spoil it early? It makes no sense. However, I’m more than happy to tease what we saw and talk about my impressions. Right after we watched the footage, I sat down with Germain from /Film to record a spoiler-free video blog. If you’d like to hear what we thought, watch it below.

The biggest takeaway from the awesome footage is that Iron Man 3 feels like the natural sequel to both Iron Man 2 and The Avengers. It also looks like they figured out a brilliant way to explain why Tony Stark would want to be left alone and not call his Avenger friends when he gets into trouble. Finally, with Iron Man 3 being the start of Marvel’s Phase 2, I also think the studio has figured out a really smart way to introduce Iron Man pushing the boundaries of what is scientifically possible and fans are going to be very excited by what they see. I really think Iron Man 3 might be the best one yet in the series and I cannot wait for May 3rd.

And one last thing: after recording the video, I was able to participate in a group interview with Robert Downey Jr., as well as an interview with director Shane Black and Kevin Feige. Click the links to read or listen to what they had to say. You can also watch the brand new Iron Man 3 trailer here.

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Here’s the official synopsis for Iron Man 3: