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Iron Man 2

I can’t find the words…as bad as the first one was good… The theater I saw it in was perfectly quiet the whole movie. No cheers, nothing. And no smiling faces after it ended.

Premise

The threat in the original boiled down to Tony Stark’s partner, Obadiah, building his own suit to defeat Tony (Robert Downey, Jr.). The threat in the second was another bad guy building his own suit(s) to defeat Tony. Storytelling 101- don’t repeat things! (I don’t know what goes on in the Iron Man comics, and don’t care, but that doesn’t work in the movies.)

Specifically, I knew the movie was in trouble from the first scene as it repeated a sequence from the original. In the original, Tony Stark built a unique and life-changing device in a cave out of scraps. Here, Mickey Rourque did the same, albeit with blueprints and in a dingy apartment.

I read many reviews (after seeing the movie) that said this movie had good action. Where was it? How did I miss it? Even Act III hardly counts as good action since it was an exaggerated copy of the original’s climax.

Premise / Character / Plot

Problem #2 with the foundation of the story was that there was no story. #1 was clear, simple, and it pushed the movie forward. Here, there were too many characters, too many antagonists, doing too many things without it all hanging on a singluar line of plot. Even though filmmakers can always look back at failures to avoid the pitfalls, you’d think these guys would have at least learned from the similarly flawed Spider-Man 3.

Tony Stark had no objective until Act 3 and even that was muddled since he had no idea what would happen at the Expo.

Other flawz, in no particular order and category…

- Tony revealed he was Iron Man at the end of the original. This was stupid and setup too much silliness for the sequel, like none of nemeses simply shooting Tony at his many public appearances. You can argue it fit his character, but the filmmakers should’ve known better.

- Ivan had a grudge with Tony, yet was willing to kill innocent people in Monaco who were not even in his way. And storming the race track in front of thousands of fans and millions of TV viewers? This made him a caricature of a villain instead of someone interesting and was a sign that the movie was going for cheap thrills over gripping action.

- The What if? aspect of the story was lost. There are geniuses like Tony Stark in the real world so it’s a minor suspension of disbelief to accept what he created. The rest of the original movie took place in the world as we know it (his computer, Jarvis, and the voice-reactive machinery were a bit of a stretch, but also a part of Tony’s genius creations). Here, much of the world changed- Tony “privatized world peace”- and that was too much to accept, made me feel unconnected to the world presented in the movie.

- There were three references to God in relation to Iron Man and that also stretched the believability. I don’t recall Superman ever being refered to in such a manner. Whereas only one thing can kill Superman, Iron Man can be offed by fire, a strong-enough bomb, drowning, suffocation, starvation, a laser, etc. And again, since everyone knows who’s in the suit, it’s even easier just to kill Tony Stark.

- Didn’t #1 end with Tony and Pepper being open about their feelings for each other? Then why did Tony have the hots for Scarlett Johansson right in front of Pepper, and with Pepper not being personally upset about it?

- Col. Rhodes had access to Tony’s lair where his most private work was done. So did the SHIELD agent. Tony’s suits were not protected in any way. Rhodes donned the silver suit for a silly reason- to disperse the guests and to snap Tony out of it; this should have been for a more urgent reason. Rhodes activated the suit without any voice or retina detection by Jarvis; why would anyone but Tony be able to activate it? Without any knowledge or training, Rhodes expertly used the suit.

- Rhodes gave the suit to Hammer and the military, even though he had reservations about their intentions.

- At the end, Scarlett used Jon Favreau to get a ride to Hammer’s headquarters and changed into her special gear in the car and beat up all the guards in front of him, thus revealing that she was much more than she appeared to be. That’s how a secret agent from SHIELD behaves?!

- Iron Man had a cool new feature at the end, the laser that sliced in half all the Hammer suits. This would have been much cooler had we seen Tony working on it early in the story.

- The part about Tony’s father helping him…Tony creating a new element in his lair…confusing and ridiculous.

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