Dee Discusses: Iron Man 2

Woo, part three! My plan is to get Thor up tomorrow, and Captain America on Thursday. I will be seeing The Avengers at the midnight showing on Thursday. I will probably post a review of Avengers ASAP, although I am still deciding if I’ll try to make it spoiler free or not. That’s hardly important right now. Instead we’re going to talk about Iron Man 2 which furthers along the story of Tony Stark and the eventual team-up we’ll be seeing this week. Plus more Robert Downey Jr. Yaaaaaaaay! Spoilers below.

Iron Man came out in 2008, and they got working on a sequel after that due to its overwhelming success. As mentioned before the Hulk wasn’t quite the success they were hoping for, but Iron Man seemed like a guaranteed money maker. And it was. It made over 600 million dollars in the box office. This was one wasn’t quite as critically acclaimed however. The Rotten Tomatoes score dropped almost 20%. This is what happens sometimes when the first one is so good and expectations get too high. It’s difficult to find that same spark and to satisfy viewers who want it to be bigger and better. Despite the somewhat disappointed reviews, it didn’t really matter; it made a buttload of money and Iron Man 3 is a sure thing. Let’s look at this one a bit more closely.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has been Iron Man for eight months now, and he’s loving his new fame. He always loved his fame and money before, but this is a whole new level of egomania. He has reopened his father’s Stark Expo, a time for the best scientists to present their future ideas. Tony is called before the Senate to answer for his “Iron Man weapon,” but he manages to dismiss the charges by pointing out no one is going to be able to make the same technology as him. They’re years from it because he’s smarter than everyone and he’s “privatized world peace.” Underneath his bravado and arrogance, Tony’s scared and desperate. The arc reactor in his chest is slowly poisoning him. His blood toxicity grows with each passing day and when he wears the suit it gets higher. He’s no closer to finding a cure, so he starts secretly planning for the inevitable. He makes Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) the new CEO of his company, he starts giving away his company, and increasingly becomes erratic as the movie goes on. He jumps into a race car at the Ciruit de Monaco and during it is attacked by Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), a Russian engineer who made a weapon as dangerous as Tony’s suit. He has the same designs as the original suit because his father worked with Howard Stark. Stark deported him which led to many years of bitterness and hatred which he passed along to Ivan.

Tony’s major weapons rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) sees potential in Ivan. He wants him to help build better robots and weapons so he can show off at the Stark Expo and get respect. He breaks Ivan out of jail and is stupid enough to let this dangerous Russian criminal have free reign of his technology. Stupid stupid stupid. As Tony starts running off the rails more, he gets drunk at his birthday party while in the suit and Rhodey (Don Cheadle) steals one of his suits. The two friends have a brutal fight beforehand. The morning after Tony is approached by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). He’s aware that Tony is dying and sent an undercover agent Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) to spy on him. Natasha was hired as his new assistant when Pepper was promoted. Fury insists that somewhere in Howard Stark’s files may be the answer Tony needs, and he starts watching his father’s old tapes. After trying to apologize to Pepper, he sees his father’s old floor plan designs for the City of the Future and realizes there’s something hidden there. An element! The one that could save him! Who woulda thought? Anyway yeah yeah, he gets cured, Vanko attacks everyone at the expo with his drones, Rhodey almost kills Tony when he’s controlled by Vanko but they fight together. And are seriously badass. Vanko is killed, Tony is healthy, he gets the girl (go Pepper!) and voila. At the very end Fury tells him they don’t trust his erratic behavior so they don’t want to invite him to the Avengers right now; he will be a consultant instead. This is bound to come up in the Avengers.

I’m not sure I agree with the lukewarm reviews on this. I loved this movie just as much as the first one. I thought Vanko was a much more menacing bad guy than Obie was in the first one. Yeah there was some stupidity with him too, that bird thing wtf, but he was genuinely dangerous. He had serious reason to hate Tony and I liked the parallel of them as their fathers’ sons. People said it wasn’t the “breath of fresh air” the first movie was. Yeah, because that was the first one. If you keep that in mind no wonder sequels rarely get the attention the original does, even if they’re good movies.  I loved Tony’s journey to be Iron Man, but I really liked seeing him as Iron Man. I thought it was interesting he had serious ramifications from the US government, because how would that look like honestly? Of course they’d want that technology. And Rhodey had some points about whether or not Tony should have this dangerous tech. He got drunk in the armor and could have killed someone. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in this movie, and I think it had just as much heart and flavor as the first one. RDJ continued to be fantastic, I loved his continued romance with Pepper, and in general I was happy with it. The biggest criticism I saw was “it wasn’t as good as the first.” But no one could point out where exactly.

I’d be happy to hear from other people what they think was lacking in it that the first had. In my opinion it had a good story, good special effects, still a great cast, and a more interesting villain. Plus it introed the Black Widow, who will be a major part of the Avengers. The big change for me was of course Don Cheadle replacing Terrence Howard. That was a weird one. From what Howard said, there wasn’t even an explanation given to him for why he was replaced. There were things said about them not getting along with Howard and wanting to drop his salary, but whatever the case, Cheadle was brought in. I love Don Cheadle, he is a serious and talented actor. For me though, Howard was the better Rhodey. He fit the character in terms of build and presence better. His chemistry with RDJ was warmer. Maybe Cheadle a little too grave and serious to have that same camaraderie. I think Cheadle did fine, don’t get me wrong, but my personal preference would’ve been for Howard to stay on. That being said, it wasn’t my choice, so what can you do? And yeah maybe the Howard Stark was a little too easy. I enjoyed it anyway! And call me a sentimental girl all you like, but I’m excited to see what a relationship between Pepper and Tony would actually look like.

Next up is Thor, which is a very important movie for the Avengers because it introduces one of the major members and the villain. Get ready to thee and thou with the best of them.