I don't know why so many people consider this one of the worst of the early Marvel movies. I thought it was a fun adventure, with the lots of twists and turns and various subplots that come together at the end that MCU movies typically have.

I thought Mickey Rourke was spellbindingly menacing, charismatic and fun as the villain. Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man has been the most watchable and engaging of all of the MCU superheroes, so anything where he got a lot of screen time has been worth it.

I suppose that perhaps people rank it low among the early MCU movies because so many of them were so excellent, and the competition was fierce. But compared with later MCU movies, this ranks as a masterpiece.