Iron Man 2

Rating: 4/10 (19 April 2020)

Iron Man 2 is a film directed by Jon Favreau that starts Robert Downey Jr, Mickey Rourke and Don Cheadle and tells the story of a man named Ivan Vanko trying to exact revenge on Tony Stark due to familial betrayal in the past, while Tony deals with poison in his body and alcoholism. Iron Man 2 as a film has had a mixed impact at best on myself as a film fan. There are a lot of things I liked in the film and many things annoy the absolute hell out of me and unfortunately a lot dip into spoiler territory. The things I liked in the film include as usual Robert Downey Jr's performance and honestly for the rest of my Marvel Series I'm going to stop pointing out how great it is because without him there is no MCU and he's fantastic in every film. I also enjoyed seeing the film take a stab at the heavy topic of alcoholism and watching Tony struggle with the poison in his body. It didn't delve nearly as deep into these topics as I would've liked but it was still nice to see I suppose. Don Cheadle also plays Rhodey A.K.A War Machine very well in the film and as I stated in my review of the first Iron Man film, much better than Terrence Howard. Often times Howard felt like he tried to take the shine away from his co-stars (which I've heard is true but I'll have to double-check that one) but Cheadle is much more calm and I really enjoy the dry humor he gives Rhodey as a character. Also now that I've mentioned Tony and Rhodey, the only standout action sequence of the film in my eyes was when Tony and Rhodey fought at his party but I enjoyed it more from a comedic aspect than any other reason. I enjoyed the special effects in the film as well and I've always loved the scene where Tony puts on the Mark V suit on the race track. That whole transformation sequence from Suitcase to suit was awesome and not to spoil future series but it was also a bright spot of Michael Bay's Transformers films. I also enjoyed AC/DC being utilized as well. It's about at this point that the notable positives end and everything else begins. Ivan Vanko and Justin Hammer are very flat as villains despite the efforts of Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell. Rourke's motivation to go after Stark is that Starks father took all the credit for the design of the Arc Reactor when in reality his father Anton Vanko was working on it with him as well. You never get a sense of the depth of this betrayal aside from the fact that Anton and Ivan live in a really crappy house in Russia and the Starks are... well... Billionaires. Ivan doesn't have a personality aside from wanting to bring Tony Stark down and an affection for his bird. The only notable line of dialogue I remember from his character in the movie is "I want my bird." His whole plan, by the way, of getting revenge on Tony was to go to a race track and attack him with whips? How the hell do whips stop multiple long range weapons? Without Hammer Tech being in this movie, Vanko would have gotten his ass kicked and that would've been the movie. Speaking of Justin Hammer, he has no memorable lines or development and is basically Tony Stark but without the charm or snarkiness. He does it all because he wants to beat Stark in the business world, isn't that entertaining? If done correctly, it could've been. Problem is, he was just a boring billionaire movie sterotype. He also made a few dumb decisions in the movie like partnering with Vanko, a man who is clearly unstable to stop Tony Stark. Vanko didn't just attack Tony on that track, he destroyed two other formula ones and it was in front of international news cameras. If your intention is to outdo Stark and promote your brand then why would you partner up with Vanko, that makes you look horrible. If you were going to hide it from the public and privately work with him, wouldn't you question his psyche? Iron Man 2 also introduced us to SHIELD, Nick Fury and Black Widow and while that part of the movie was interesting, it certainly wasn't a wow factor. The action sequences featuring Black Widow were decent although they were cut together choppily. Johanssen did play Widow well though thankfully and her interactions with Happy were pretty funny. Jon Favreau as Happy is one of the more underrated elements of Marvel films, the man is funny. Samuel L Jackson played Fury well for the brief time he was on screen, felt like I should mention that. While we're on the topic, SHIELD helped Tony deduce a message from his dad that allowed him to create a new element to stop the poison in his chest. My question is, why would Howard Stark hide something like that from his son at all to start, why would he hide it in the form of what is essentially an Easter egg to continue and why would he hide it at all? Is it to increase the value of the Arc Reactor technology? That Arc literally powered a building in the first Iron Man. This film really annoys me from a narrative perspective, I know it was released around the time of the writer's strike but good God. These are questions that I'm asking while reviewing this film purely from memory because these are the damn reasons I just don't want to rewatch it. All of the notable aspects were really small, it felt like Iron Man 2 was more focused on building a franchise of Marvel films than really standing as it's own film which was evident with the presence of SHIELD and a post credits sequence featuring Thor's hammer. It's a shame that that's the case because the ability to stand on it's own is why I loved the first Iron Man film. I just really couldn't get fully into this film.