Destroys the mythos and IM character

Rating: 4/10 (21 October 2010)

The best way to sum this movie up is that it's like rain, one droplet isn't a huge problem but add enough and you have a flood. So it was with this movie slowly chipping away at the Iron Man mythos from the first film and creating problems. Almost everything that the first movie laid out was systematically destroyed in this one.
--- Spoiler ---
In the first movie we're shown that it was this nearly superhuman feat of genius that Tony built the Arc Reactor in a cave, then went on to build the suit with the best of the best of current technology. In the second movie we learn that his father built something better...in the 1970s, when the Apple IIE, Atari and VW Golf were top of the line technology.
In the first movie Tony is a savvy businessman. In the second he lets his company crumble away without care, finally ousting the ruins onto Pepper to run.
In the first movie he uses the Iron Man suit to stop various conflicts and destroy illegal weapons caches. In the second movie he uses the suit to pee in, dance around drunk at his birthday party and explode watermelons over a bunch of scantily-clad young women. We're told early on that he's the cause of world peace but we don't see any of that. It's one line fairly early on and then forgotten about.
There are far too many filler callouts to the upcoming Avengers movie and solo movies. Captain America's shield, Thor's hammer, Nick Fury, etc, making the movie feel like a rushed out, desperate filler to attract attention to those movies instead of making a good Iron Man movie. "Hey if Tony Stark has a Cap shield then it must be cool! Lets go see it when it comes out!" Sure there's a lot of slow-motion action sequences and explosions and a few laugh out loud moments but for those who care about Iron Man and aren't in it just to see 'an action film' it's a pretty sad to see a great super hero stumbling around drunk, making bathroom jokes, peeing in his suit and making a fool of himself for 98% of the movie.