The first bad movie of MCU

Rating: 1/10 (12 November 2013)

Before a bunch of Marvel fans start sending me death threats and Nolanites chant "One of us, one of us" I don't hate MCU, In all honesty, the first phase was actually pretty fun to watch with the exception of this and The Avengers, but the reason I hate this and the later MCU attempts is due to dumb writing, bad characters and overall, they're overrated.
Okay the film starts out with Ivan Vankov, better known as Whiplash, watching Tony Stark reveal that he is Iron Man to the world from the first film and this causes Mickey Rourke to attempt to put emotion into the scene...its just as terrifying as it sounds. We cut to 6 months later and Tony has reverted from "noble hero" to "full of myself prick". The character did a complete 180. I actually get the feeling I missed a better movie within that 6 months. Anyway, Tony is called in by the US Government to turn over the Iron Man armor to the American people. He convinces them not to by saying that the suit replicas are nothing to fear by showing test footage, one included with Justin Hammer, one of the new villains.
The thing that gets me about this is that...no other engineer on the entire planet is as smart as Tony Stark? Okay, considering that he gave his company to Pepper in this film (why?...I don't know! What does the company do now?...I don't know!) I actually severely doubt that. Then he eventually makes it to the Grand Prix and decides to ride in the race but little does he know that Whiplash was waiting for him...because he somehow has the ability to see into the future and was able to tell that Tony Stark would be riding. Chaos ensues, Whiplash goes to prison and Tony is upset at stealing his mini arc reactor design...there were designs for it? Why weren't there more? So Justin Hammer actually likes what he did...for some reason and asks him to build Iron Man armor for him because he faked Vankov's death. Meanwhile Tony is suffering from the BIG BAD Government and they press him more and more to give him the suit, little does anyone know that the reactor is also killing him. He decides to have his birthday and apparently, his friends don't like that so Rhodey decides "f#ck it, I'm stealing one of his suits", they fight and Rhodey flies away to get it weaponized by Justin Hammer who is suffering problems from Vankov making drones that can only salute for Stark's expo. That's the plan of the villains...why does it pose a threat to Stark again? To cut a long story short, they build up The Avengers, they kill Vankov, cure his blood toxicity (yes thats actually a plot point) and the Government decides to give him a medal.
Okay my first complaint...where's the story? Stark has no clear goal to work on for almost 3 quarters of the film. He just gets drunk, pees in his suit and eats in a Product Placement. There is no clear villain, there is no motivation from any of them either and it does feel like that Tony's only beef with the Drones in the expo is "I don't want weapons being made without me"...thats why he backed out an hour into the first Iron Man movie. Justin Hammer's dialogue literally sounds like a 6 year old considering how much he complains. In fact thats what this reminds me of, 6 year olds playing Iron Man in their backyard as a fantasy. It has every single element to that with the exception of the okayish acting and okayish visual effects. Everything else feels like a 6 year old pretending to be Iron Man in a game, even the dialogue has that element.
Overall...this is literally just build up to The Avengers, arguably thats what all the MCU Phase 1 movies are but those movies actually had a story, characters beyond cut outs, something that could pass off as a fun time in the cinemas. This film? No. However, considering the other bad movies of the MCU (Iron Man 3 and The Avengers), this one is by far the least awful of them.