Iron Man 2 2010
I missed this movie when it came out in the theaters. Despite pretty poor ratings on Netflix, I checked it out anyway. I liked the original Iron Man even when I watched it a second time on a plane trip. Robert Downey plays a flawed character pretty well, but you still want him to succeed. The difficulty in a second movie is that you lose the most interesting part about how the character comes to exist. Spiderman failed miserably in this sense, just giving us two lame bad guys to make up for it. If you know you’re going to have a franchise, you could let out details of the backstory out over time instead of all at once, but since there are no guarantees, movies always seem to have to cover everything in the first episode. I digress.
In this sequel, the world knows about Iron Man and they even know who Iron Man is, unlike the typical superhero franchise. Knowing the identity, there are conflicts and doubts, like whether Tony Stark is really the guy you want to have Iron Man’s power. It’s not like it’s an elected position.
Meanwhile, people are trying to copy Iron Man’s formula of a guy in a techology-laden armored suit and not making quick progress. However, the son of Tony Stark’s father’s original partner is making some key strides. This Russian, played by Mickey Rourke, has an iron suit and electrical whips. It works, I guess. Meanwhile you get some other characters involved like Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle (in Terrence Howard’s original role), perennial backup guy Sam Rockwell as a goofy rival defense contractor, and not least Gwyneth Paltrow’s portrayal of Stark’s loyal assistant with its attendant pre-romantic banter.
I like that the story is not non-stop giant action scenes and instead lets the story drive things and the action supports that. Even at the end, the big action scene paled in comparison to any five minutes of Transformers, but that’s fine with me. At some point big action scenes become like drum solos: more is not necessarily better.
I also like that we are getting teasers of other Marvel movies in the works like Captain America, Thor, and The Avengers, without it seeming entirely like product placement. I don’t know if that will really pay off (haven’t seen Captain America or Thor, which I didn’t even realize had come out), but I like that they are dangling all of this out there.
So anyway, to me this was a pretty good movie. The story pretty much made sense despite a few weaknesses and I enjoyed the cast of characters as well as Downey’s portrayal of Stark. It may not be quite as good as the first one, but it is pretty close. I’ll give it a B+.
Written: 06 Nov 2011
Owned on: Blu-ray, Digital