DAAYUM!!! Much better than the first!

Rating: 10/10 (30 April 2010)

I liked the first Iron Man movie quite a bit, but there was a good deal of things in it that I was critical of. I felt that several bits didn't work very well, and the level of excitement just wasn't that great.
They sure remedied that in the sequel!! Okay, so Scarlett Johansson didn't have much to do. Okay, so a couple of minor scenes were less than realistic (like, why do Happy and Pepper stay in the wrecked car during the fight when they could just run to safety - that sort of thing). And okay, so the drone army was not that threatening and didn't pack much of a punch. Aaand, Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer was played a little bit too much for laughs. But these are very minor things. The overall mesh of plot lines, character interactions, comic book references, humor, action and sheer visual candy combined to produce the greatest entertainment value of any Marvel-based superhero movie yet. Hot damn!
One of the things I liked best was the "slow" part in the middle where Tony watched the old film from his father, and found the structure of the new element in the "key to the future" model city (a city which had also actually been built, and in the center of which the climactic battle took place). Great effects, great plot element! :-) And the particle accelerator he threw together; that was massively great fun for me!
There were a long list of comic book references in this movie that everyone who hasn't read the comics will naturally have missed. For instance, the reason they turned Justin Hammer into the Sam Rockwell type (Rockwell tends to play the same character, always sporting his trademark Nervous Chuckle) was to make him a comical element. In the comics that character is older and tough and very confident, but the movie version consciously parodied him in order to add more humor to the movie. Not that it needed it; it had plenty to go around!
I just don't have any rally major gripe about this movie; I thought it was fabulous entertainment and much better than the first. Who SEZ this isn't the Mighty Marvel Age of Great Comic Book Movies?!
9 out of 10.