SPOILERS: DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW ALL THE STUPID THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN IRON MAN 2 :SPOILERS
The best part of Iron Man 2 happened for me before the movie even started when I bumped into Santana in the popcorn line.
It all kind of went downhill from there, except that that new Dinardo movie Inception looks awesome. Now, I don't think Iron Man 2 was a bad movie by any means; I just think you'll be hard-pressed to find a more disappointing film this year.
But to be honest, you really shouldn't be disappointed. Looking back at Iron Man 1, the first half was stellar, probably better than just about any superhero movie, and the second half was pretty average. Iron Man 2 kind of just keeps that second half ball rolling. My guess is that the first half of Iron Man 3 will suck, but the end of it will be really good, and back on par with what they started.
Some things that I had a problem with during the film:
Right at the start, you've got a guy who wears a suit with the capabilities of flight ... on an airplane. It's a little thing, but still, Iron Man probably doesn't need to be taking planes to get to where he needs to go. However, I did really like the dancing girls.
Okay, so cut to the courtroom- Iron Man has saved the world, but everyone's worried that someone else will have the capabilities to make a suit like this, so they need his to prevent that. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't someone at the END OF THE FIRST MOVIE build a suit just like his? I don't think this is an unfounded fear.
Anyways, Tony Stark acts like a huge dick and just leaves- something he does a lot in this movie.
All right, so sum mo' BS, cut to Monaco and the racetrack. And Whiplash is there slicing up cars with his whips, which are pretty sweet, I must say.
And then he sees Tony Stark and starts trying to kill him- one of the few downsides of letting people know your identity. However, Stark wasn't supposed to even be in that car. So what was Whiplash's plan here? Just keep slicing up cars until Iron Man showed up to save the day? And how come a whip of electricity can slice through metal but not Robert Downey Jr.'s ankles?
But okay, it was just a first showdown. Of course, anywhere else in the world and this guy would have been shot 100 times by the police. Here, they just wait til Iron Man subdues him and then cuff him. I also love how in movies, prisons in any foreign country, even first-world ones, are total lawless shanties where anything goes.
All right, let's speed up here- so Whiplash busts out of prison, teams up with a rich guy who's going to hook him up, they go to the secret lab, and a guy who's just spent the last 15 years in prison is firing on all cylinders typing away at an ultra-futuristic keyboard. I get that he's a genius scientist, but come on.
This is also where the movie really loses steam, as both of its main characters are placed under house arrest.
First off, those whips are really dangerous and should not be used indoors. Second of all, why imprison these two characters? Sure it provides a nice parallel between the two sons of scientists, but one thinks the other is dead, so they are not in conflict with each other any more. Iron Man is once again without a nemesis, an antagonist, which was the main problem with the first film.
The movie then presents another great opportunity for some conflict when Iron Man gets hammered and fights his buddy War Machine, which by the way was a really weak and forced way to squeeze in the name of the character in the movie. He's more like a party-crashing machine, or house-wrecking machine.
This is where the movie shows promise. Iron Man is drunk as shit, playing DJ Hero, partying. It's the fun that was all over the first movie. And we get a great battle between two Iron Men.
Side note: I'm a little confused as to how War Machine can even exist. Don't the suits need a power source to work, which only exists in Tony Stark's chest, which is why he's unique? And I thought the extra one that he had was destroyed at the end of the first movie. And even if they came up with with a way to just throw one in the suit and let anyone use it, Iron Man doesn't use that old and busted suit anymore, so why would he spend the time to upgrade it to these capabilities? So that Gwyneth Paltrow could get his back? And finally, wasn't a large portion of the first movie about Tony trying to figure out how to even use the suit, and here comes Don Cheadle acting like a combat vet in his Spartan armor. I guess it's part of your training in the army now.
So they fight, fuck shit up, and then Don Cheadle bounces with the suit that Iron Man has spent the whole movie trying to protect. I'm reminded of a scene from another film:
You've got a great opportunity for conflict here! Iron Man now has to chase after his best friend to get this prized possession back, or else the government will use it for evil! Iron Man has to take on the army! No, instead, Iron Man just says "Fuck it."
And then Sam Jackson shows up, just for shits and giggles, because he is the only person in the world that has the antidote to Tony Stark's heart problem, even though Tony Stark has absolutely no boundaries in solving the most difficult problems of the world. I also like this scene because after seeing Iron Man smash through concrete with his heavy ass suit, he can also sit on plastic benches, no problem.
These next few scenes kind of sum up the problems of this film. Tony doesn't do anything in the entire movie. People just tell him things- it reminds me a lot of watching Angels and Demons or The DaVinci Code where they run around for a little bit, then Tom Hanks and Magneto tell the girl some history, then they run some more, repeat. It's just the laziest storytelling. And here Tony doesn't even get to run around. There's one scene where he drives to show off a little Audi product placement, and that's it.
So now Iron Man is on house arrest, and has to solve a riddle that his dad made for him, in the hopes that 40 years after he invented a new element using a theme park, Tony will finally have the 3-D computer to interpret the map and make the element which just so happens to be the same element that he needs to keep him from dying.
For starters, they were making new elements back in the day, Dad- I think you could have taken care of this one. And how come you can write the blueprint for the element in the 60's, but you can't read it until you get a computer from the 23rd century? But mostly, this part of the movie exists so that Iron Man doesn't go chase after his suit and instead lets the government run wild with it. Even though he does leave the house. Even though they were guards posted all over the premises. And even though when he comes back no one cares. Even though they said they were going to taser him and make him watch Supernanny if he left.
This was probably the last thing this movie needed at this point in the film.
So he makes a new element, which happens to be a triangle instead of a circle, so he has to make a new heart as well, and a new holder for it on his suit, all in about 30 minutes, it seems. And then he meets back up with War Machine at the expo.
A few thoughts about other developments- War Machine asks the Gun manufacturer to put all the guns in the suit, but then at the end we only see two of them. Where's the scene where Don Cheadle's using a pistol to take down enemy Iron Men? And then Hammer the gun guy shows off his new Iron Men at the end, and has a bunch for each branch of the military, EXCEPT for the Coast Guard! Fuck you, Hammer!
Then of course, everything goes to shit, and Iron Man and War Machine save the day. I couldn't help but think that this movie should have been reworked to have this be at the beginning of the movie. Hammer could have busted these things out at the beginning, they suck, then he meets Whiplash, who helps him cook up some good ones. The way this movie is structured, you might as well have just left Whiplash out, or just make him some techno nerd, because other than that first scene at the race tracks, he just sits in jail cells.
We get a big finale, with lots of explosions. And of course, the first thing I think of is collateral damage. One moment I really like is when one of the bad Iron Men, who has been blasting carelessly for 5 minutes, drops down behind a kid wearing an plastic Iron Man mask (Whiplash is controlling these things and gets fooled by a kid with a balloon who is not even wearing the Time's Man of the Year World's Most Famous Suit) and takes about an hour to carefully line up his shot, until the real Iron Man can come and save the day, and then flies away without burning the kid with his thrusters.
Why does Iron Man insist on flying as close as possible to buildings, highways, and people? With all the bullets and explosions going on? Why doesn't he just fly up into outer space like he did last time and just ice all these shitty clones? And finally, why does he have to stop and land in a park before he can use his weapons? Why doesn't he blast these suckers out of the sky while they're chasing after him?
And finally finally, I probably would have brought a backpack full of ammo for that circle laser he uses. That thing could have ended the fight really quickly, like, all the way back when these things were all still on the ground inanimate at the expo.
And triple finally, so Whiplash comes back with a suit and some super whips, and although he's making a huge mistake by not wearing the special helmet he spent all that time building for himself, the major weakness is that he didn't make longer whips. I have drawn a diagram of how you beat Whiplash in 2 seconds when it's Iron Man and War Machine versus.
Don't give us some lame Ghostbusters-knock off crossing the streams moment, followed by a scene stolen from Predator where the bad guy dies laughing and blows up the world, except that the explosions in this movie are basically just fireworks. I guess even the fact that they pulled the "Let's do that thing we did earlier in the movie where we shoot our lasers at each other" scene is showing how much effort they put into this.
And once again, after everyone complaining how lame an ending Iron Man 1 had where the bad guy gets into a big-ass Iron Man suit, what do they do here? And how the hell did Mickey Rourke get so good at using the suit?!?
And then the movie ends with a scene from Star Wars, where everyone gets a medal and the world is saved. Oh, and all that sexual tension that was boiling in the first movie but was completely forgotten about in this one is released as Tony hooks up with Gwyneth Paltrow, who is the only CEO I know of that is allowed to stay directly in harm's way without a bodyguard.
Oh, and there's a little scene at the end of the credits too, just like in the first movie, except that where that scene teased us with a new character (Sam Jackson as Nick Fury) and started setting up the sequel, here we get a scene where you see a hammer in a crater in the desert, and have to know of course, that the next Marvel movie is Thor, and that Thor has a hammer. And he's the only one who can pick it up. So we're left with a scene that has nothing to do with Iron Man 3.
Hopefully they did this for a good reason, as they realized they really need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what the hell the third movie is going to be about.
Some other thoughts:
I love how they tell you that Whiplash and his dad are bad guys because they were trying to make some money by selling their research to foreign governments, even though that's exactly what Tony used to do.
Scarlet Johannson finally gets to fight a bunch of people, but it seems like she just climbs on them and spins around them really fast until she gives them Indian sunburn and they fall down, while Jon Favreau has to fight the one guy who can take 15 punches and not go down.
And of course, even though he did nothing wrong, they arrest Hammer Time, just so that he can come back in the third movie, probably in an Iron Man suit of his own.
Like I said, it's not a bad movie- it's better than all of the Spidermans- but it's not a good movie either. It's main problem is shared by all the superhero movies- Batman, Spider-man, X-Men, etc.- it just picks one theme and keeps harping on it over and over. "Tony, your ego is out of control, you're dying, you have to change, you can't do this alone." "With great power comes great responsibility." "How do I stay true to my convictions of justice with all of these bad guys who have no morals?" "I'm really scared of bats so you will be too." "Mutants are like gay people and they deserve rights too."
Movies are supposed to be about a lot of things, and this one, for as much as seemingly happens in it, isn't really about anything. There's about one hour of a cool Iron Man movie here, and about one hour of shitty filler. Here's hoping they figure out which is which in the next one.
