It does not feel like a whole thing

Rating: 4/10 (16 May 2010)

There is simple no point of comparison between The Dark Knight and IM2 and if we could all see what each one is you can see why IM2 ends up failing.
For starters Iron Man2 tries to be at the same time a teaser of Avengers. a decent sequel, a funny summertime movie. Within these three responsibilities Iron Man2 has to be taken within a bigger cannon, and as such it is not a whole thing in itself.
That could be good as it happened with The Incredible Hulk (As it managed to homage the 70s series, felt much more like a sequel (Even if it wasn't) to Hulk than this is to IM, and delivering both a complete story yet full of natural hints as teaser of the Iniciative) But Favreau or rather the whole production team decided to spent money paying a more than famous artist to do the storyboard rather than keep an actor who performed well enough in the first one. I am by no means doubting the talent of Cheadle and I know that Katie Holmes was successfully replaced in The Dark Knight (But Maggie not only does not jump that obviously to the sight, no, she has few scenes and the importance of the character comes from the memories, significance of her appearance rather than the character actions in themselves) Don simply makes the whole thing does not feel like an aesthetic unity anymore.
This comes as the biggest problem for me if only because no one else is giving it importance, but this is the kind of thing that would get attention if it happened to Ron Weasley. But it is not the only one. Iron Man 2 feels overstuffed, it has cool characters that feel a little forced into the mix (The SHIELD agents Natasha and Fury) Certainly Mickey Rourke could have done much more, and Sam Rockwell delivers greatly that much I can tell you.
Some people will see the "Element" creation as something a little over the top, but it is not except for the Captn reference, not subtle and cool like in the first one.
Iron Man2 is fun, yes, and the special effects are a la pair with the first movie, but it tries to be a cannon piece to much and fails in such an obvious way that I could not give it any better status than X3:Last Stand.