Jon Favreau has finally given us a sequel to the amazing super hero movie that was Iron Man. Tony Stark is back to give us more witty one liners, smashing action, and to sleep with all 12 Maxim cover models. Unfortunately, the sequel is beginning to show a few signs of what I like to call sci-fi syndrome. It has gotten a little bit too in love with itself, and as such is going too much in depth with side characters. In the first movie, Robert Downey Jr and Jeff Bridges dominated the screen time, showing off Gwyneth Paltrow on the side when it could, and this lead to a great feeling of the hero against the villain. In this sequel, Mickey Rourke did an amazing job in his character, was actually intimidating, and seemed completely cool, but he hardly had any screen time at all, so it was impossible to actually see him as a powerful villain to be feared. Jeff Bridge’s character was clearly evil and a force to be reckoned with. This dilution of the villain and hero lead to this movie’s fall from grace.
In this movie, Tony Stark is reveling in his new found power as a super hero. He flies in the face of a congressional investigation, he opens a yearlong exposition to show off his newest technology, and he generally does whatever he wants. Unfortunately, the palladium in his chest piece is slowly poisoning him and he doesn’t have much time left. He begins living particularly recklessly and is attacked by our main villain who is out to avenge his father. As Tony Stark falls, he gives control of his company to Pepper Potts, an odd move, and after losing one of his suits to his best friend and leash holder from the Air Force, he is contacted by SHIELD head Nick Fury, and told of his father’s illustrious past. The bad guys come together, set up a force to attack Tony, and Tony eventually defeats them with the help of his friend. All in all, the plot isn’t important to this movie.
The biggest problem I found was how many side characters gained screen time. His body guard had a ton of screen time, and overall was a pretty boring character. We’re introduced to Nick Fury and the rest of SHIELD, a femme fatale agent who watches over Tony Stark, an industry rival named Hammer, and Pepper has a ton of screen time. What all this means is that everything feels very diluted. This is my sci-fi syndrome. A given story becomes too in love with all the little things on the side and starts to focus on those instead of the main hero and villain. The first movie was utterly lovable and exciting and cool because Tony Stark was all those things. Robert Downey Jr is still all those things in this movie, but we just don’t get to see it as much because he’s sharing the screen too often with weaker characters.
The other problem I had with this movie was that it completely crossed the line into silly. The first movie asked us to suspend our disbelief so that there could be a few cool moments that didn’t get explained, but this sequel asked us to do that for almost the entire movie. An entire organization of super heroes and super agents, a hidden message in the layout of a fake city that shows how to “build” a new element, and more ridiculous actions than could possibly have been reasonable. Instead of being cool, this movie has started to seem silly. It seemed to be flexing its muscles into ridiculous territory for no reason other than to show off. I know it sounds odd asking a movie about Iron Man to be more subtle, but this was way over the top.
Now, I do need to point out here that the movie was enjoyable. The action scenes were gripping, and the funny and cool lines were still there. It was just clearly inferior to the first movie, and therefore a letdown. The characters were weaker, and the acting from everyone except Robert and Mickey was a bit unpolished. The movie was still fun, and it was still worth seeing, but it wasn’t anything great like the first would have lead us to believe this would be. Is it worth $10 down at the cinema? Maybe if you’re really bored. But if you have a decent TV, maybe wait to get this one from Netflix and save yourself a few dollars. Overall, Iron Man 2 receives a 7/10 from me.
(IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1228705/)
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