Iron Man 2

Two summers ago, comic book fans got the Batman movie they had waited decades for in The Dark Knight, and were surprised when Iron Man turned out to be one of the better Marvel Comics adaptations to date. Comic book fans were spoiled. Those movies helped take a genre of movie that had been widely ridiculed during the 1990s and solidified them as both box office draws and legitimately good works of cinema when put into the right director's hands. Those movies helped pave the way for the outstanding comic book adaptations over the past couple of years like Kick-Ass and Watchmen. And they allowed both Marvel and DC Comics to start taking chances with sequels and franchises. Comic book movies are now judged against the bar set by those movies, and Iron Man 2 is no exception. But it's important to temper expectations. If you expect Iron Man 2 to be anything but a drop off from Iron Man, you'll be disappointed.

That's not saying that Iron Man 2 isn't a good movie. For what it is, it's ridiculously entertaining. Unlike the original however, I had to suspend my disbelief beyond the limit of what it was willing to go. There are plot holes in this movie that aren't addressed or cleaned up. When they happen, they're jarring. Maybe not on the first view, but certainly on subsequent viewings. As with most sequels, we have an expanded cast. In some ways, that's an improvement. In some ways, it really hurts the film. Iron Man had the luxury of having an actor of Jeff Bridges' considerable talent to play opposite the engaging Robert Downey Jr., who embodies the hero he's cast to play better than anyone else in any other comic book movie, bar none. It had Terrence Howard to play Downey's straight-man. The roles of nemesis and buddy were filled by other considerably talented actors, but there's just something missing there. And that serves as an apt description for the other facets of the movie as well.

Iron Man 2 starts off at about the same time that the first one ends. We see Tony Stark's (Downey) press conference in which he denies, then admits to being Iron Man. Except in the sequel, we see this on a TV in Russia as the movie opens with Anton Vanko (Yevgeni Lazarev) watching the press conference as he is about to die. He calls his son, Ivan (Mickey Rourke) into the room as he dies, but not before giving him the blueprints to an arc reactor that Anton had worked on with Tony's father. We see Ivan finish the reactor, then we skip 6 months forward as Tony is giving the keynote speech at his Stark Expo, an expo designed to bring inventors from around the world together to share and pool ideas. As he is leaving, he receives a summons to a congressional hearing in which Senator Stern (Garry Shandling) is trying to compel Tony to turn over the Iron Man weapon. He calls a weapons expert by the name of Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) to give testimony, and further calls Stark's best friend, Col. James Rhodes (played by Howard in the original but replaced by Don Cheadle) to add more. Stark winds up embarrassing the Senator and Hammer, but it sets up one of the bigger subplots of the movie. Another subplot? We find out shortly after that Stark's arc reactor in his chest is giving him palladium poisoning, and there's no other element to replace it. The thing keeping him alive is killing him, and it leads him to turn over control of the company to his assistant/love interest Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). It also leads him to decide, at the last minute, to take over the driving duties of the car his company is sponsoring at the Monaco Grand Prix. As he is driving, Ivan Vanko enters the track and powers up a suit with electric whips that cut through most metals. Vanko is looking to ruin Stark because Stark's father deported Vanko's father years earlier.

With all these things, the movie really feels like a mess in certain spots. Certain stories and events are glossed over too quickly, and others aren't handled with the care and attention that they deserve. The subplot of Tony dying from palladium poisoning is an interesting one, but the writing team gives Stark nothing more to do than drink, stumble around a party drunk while wearing his Iron Man suit, and spend about 3/4th of the movie sulking. It's not handled with any depth to allow it to be engaging, and it's dragged on too long to be interesting. The final battle between Stark and Vanko is another thing that, without giving anything away, is handled in a very rushed and sloppy manner. The movie builds up a conflict between these two that should end up being pretty epic. Instead, the fight scene they have in Monaco early in the movie is almost double the length of the final fight between them. It feels like a let down.

As I mentioned before, certain performances detract from the overall product here. Mickey Rourke might be trying to give a performance in acting completely disinterested in everything going on around him, but I'm not convinced that his character's trait and more Rourke's attitude showing through. The Russian accent he brings is terrible, cartoonish, and inconsistent. I understand that he's a big name and he had the performance of most people's lifetime in The Wrestler, but aside from meeting the requirements of "be a big name actor," and "be an imposing physical performance," I'm not sure what he brought to this film. Likewise, while I love Cheadle as an actor, he's unconvincing in this. That's not entirely his fault, however. Iron Man spent at least a little while showing the relationship between Stark and Rhodes, and I had a sense that those two characters really were close. When you replace a character's actor with another actor, it subconsciously eliminates the perceived bond that the character had with another. It's important to re-establish that bond if their friendship is going to continue to be important. Iron Man 2 doesn't do this. At all. The character change is almost played for laughs at the Senate hearing, and then Rhodes and Stark spend the majority of the movie being angry at each other. Rhodes is irritated with Stark's irresponsibility, and Stark is irritated at Rhodes' controlling attitude. There's never any sense that these two men are friends. Iron Man 2 doesn't spend a half second showing that. I would generally say that Scarlett Johansson was terrible as well, but I can't. Her character had the best action scene in the movie, and while she played her role with nearly no discernible emotion, I have to give her credit where credit is due.

It may sound like I really dislike this movie, but I don't. I'm merely pointing out its shortcomings. As an action movie, as a summer popcorn movie, as another entry into the Iron Man cannon, and as a preparation for the upcoming The Avengers super-movie, Iron Man 2 gets the job done. It does that because nobody does it better than Robert Downey Jr. Almost single-handed, he makes this a fun experience, appropriately funny in parts while appropriately heavy in others. He elevates a cast that is big on star power but average on screen chemistry. That's aside from Rockwell, who absolutely nails his role as the bumbling, overconfident, comedic relief counterpart to Stark. What I'm grateful for with Iron Man 2 is that it allowed me to watch Robert Downey Jr. play Tony Stark again for two hours. Any movie with that as a foundation is probably going to be pretty solid, and is likely to be better than the average summer movie.

But expecting something similar to what we got in Iron Man two years ago? That's asking for something that this movie cannot deliver. All the big names, pretty explosions, and self-referential witty dialogue in the movie can't seem to match what the original gave us. It's missing something. Maybe it's the freshness or wonder. Maybe it's that the plot is significantly more ridiculous and riddled with holes this time around. It's certainly missing something. I just can't put my finger on what it is.