Movie Review: Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2, the sequel to the hit Marvel Superhero Movie of 2008, which I honestly thought wasn't as good as people make it out to be. The original was decent but I felt that the best scenes came too early and the pay off to all the build up wasn't executed very well. I didn't write a review for it but the sequel's a different story. Here's my review for Iron Man 2.

First off, let me just say that the advertising i.e. trailers for this movie were handled terribly. The first time I saw the trailer for this movie I was thinking "Is that all?". It basically spoiled the entire plot so I didn't have very high expectations for this movie and I am sad to say that the movie itself does not go any farther than the trailer shows like Dark Knight did. Not a good move that one, it really could have gone a bit further with the 2 hours it had.

Basically, Tony has announced to the world that he is Iron Man and 6 months after this it seems that he has brought upon world peace through his armored flyboy actions... somehow. Sometimes it's very hard to take the plot seriously at all with all of the stuff that goes on in this movie, suspending your disbelief as they say on TvTropes but I'll get to that later in favor of a run down through the synopsis. He gets on the government's nerves, bad guy shows him up at the F1 race, media fallout from the attacks follows, bad guy gets broken out of jail, Tony turns into a drunk ass, black best friend literally knocks some sense into him, Tony rediscovers his dad's legacy and finally onto the final battle where Iron Man and War Machine fight side by side against robots and the bad guy after the hiccups are taken care off. That's the plot and I cannot in good honesty say it was inspired. The poisoning plot was also underused, ill-timed and was fixed so soon an d easily that it really didn't live up to its potential as a plot point.

With plot leaving much to be desired, the actual scenes and direction were top notch. Particularly all the scenes that involve character development for Tony. Sure the story is cliche and terribly predictable but the movie more than makes up for it with all the tiny tidbits it throws at us. There were plenty of running gags, shout outs and witty lines in this movie and I enjoyed every bit of humor they threw at me. It was actually all these extra little details that made the movie so enjoyable. I really liked how War Machine actually threw a kitchen sink during one fight and I loved it when Tony treated the suit like they were normal clothes.

Of course, the battle scenes were excellent this time around with better pacing and choreography than the first though the last battle did end rather abruptly in an anticlimactic manner that made use of a Chekov's Gun from an earlier scene. I particularly loved the scenes where we see the femme fatale from S.H.I.E.L.D. throw people around with her Russian Judo ala Dragunov from Tekken. Dragunov happens to be my go to guy for playing Tekken so I was ridiculously impressed to see his moves get pulled off in real life. I do have to say the multiple camera close ups during the her battle with the men in black at the end should have been left out since they really broke the flow of what happened to be the most kickass scene in the movie.

Now back to the topic of the movie being hard to take seriously that I mentioned earlier. Was it Robert Downey Junior's portrayal of the jerkass richboy? Nope. The callousness of his character was a lot of fun to watch and though it did serve to lighten the mood of the story, it also served to make some scenes more powerful and believable. Was it the idiot ball that gets passed around among the villains? No, that was justified by their personalities and motivations but the movie could have done much better with more interesting and well written bad guys. It was actually the thought that went into the technology and science in the film. How does the man power his suit when there's clearly a tuxedo, race suit, etc. blocking the arc reactor from the suit? How the hell does drinking chlorophyll cure radiation/metal poisoning? Who actually designs new atoms like THAT!? I know rule of cool and refuge in audacity comes into play with all this but they're really, really pushing it here in this sequel. I don't care how plausible the technology in this movie was, it was all too damn unbelievable to take in properly.

That's it for my review on Iron Man 2. It wasn't as exciting as Dark Knight, wasn't as heroic as Spiderman 2 and certainly wasn't as compelling as Watchmen but it definitely outdid its prequel and in my book that makes it a pretty good and enjoyable superhero movie. Honestly, how did Iron Man get the same rating as Dark Knight when it wasn't even as good as Spiderman? Speaking of which, I hope to see good things from the reboot movie in 2012 and no more of the shit they did in the third movie.