Too Much 'Avengers' Not Enough 'Iron Man'

Rating: 8/10 (27 June 2011)

Iron Man 2 Rating: C+
So I think Iron Man 2 is going to be one of those movies that I need a repeat viewing to really appreciate, but I'll give you what impressions I got from my first viewing.
Iron Man 2 felt like the screenwriters couldn't choose between two ideas so, instead, decided to throw them both into one movie. Both ideas had the potential to be really good, but the movie felt a bit disjointed with the two major plot lines feeling underdeveloped and separate rather than feeling unified and working together as a whole. Basically, Iron Man 2 focused on two things: Tony Stark's struggle to get himself out of a self-destructive pattern, and a rival inventor, Justin Hammer, who is trying to steal the spotlight from Tony. There were attempts to tie the two stories together, and they worked to some extent, but in the end it just didn't really cut it.
I think that a big part of the problem is that the two plot threads were completely separated out in the context of the movie. Rather than playing the two elements off each other the film was segmented into large blocks of each story. For about 45-minutes you'd see Stark's personal struggles then suddenly we'd jump back to Justin Hammer and Whiplash and you'd go "oh yeah, these guys are in the movie too."
Which brings me to another point: Whiplash. Whiplash has to be the most tacked on villain I've ever seen. It seems like the biggest reason for him to be in the film was to provide a super battle for the climax (which ended up being disappointing in and of itself). They set up an interesting premise in the beginning of the film which would have made for a very interesting story and villain, but after the first act of the movie those motives disappeared and Whiplash became a very minor and bland background villain.
I might just be talking out of ignorance here since I've never read the comics myself, but to my knowledge it seems that Iron Man in general had pretty bland villains, and this may be a problem with the films. The first Iron Man movie was great but the villain was underdeveloped and extremely two-dimensional. This film had two villains and neither seemed to really cut it. The character of Tony Stark is very interesting, however, the villains in the series so far have been mediocre at best, no Jokers or Dr. Octopuses here.
I feel like I'm meandering with this review, but in my defense it's 3 in the morning while I'm writing this. I did enjoy the movie, the stories that were told were told fairly well, especially the parts that focused more on Tony Stark, and the acting was great as it was in the first one, however this film was disappointing due to some sillier plot devices than the first as well as stories that felt disconnected rather than unified. I think the film would have been better served by taking one of those core ideas and expanding on that rather than having the mismatch of plot threads that exist now.
Iron Man 2 was by no means a bad movie, just disappointing when compared to the first.
Also, stay through the credits when you see the film, this is a Marvel film after all.