One of the worst comic book movies out there

Rating: 1/10 (12 August 2013)

There was nothing engaging in this movie. Robert Downey Jr. was obviously the best thing about the first Iron Man but here he just doesn't seem to care. I wasn't emotionally invested in any of the characters and I didn't feel the romance between Tony and Pepper in the slightest either. Jon Favreau was his usual unfunny self. A bad kid actor can really be the death of a movie by himself and in this movie we have a very annoying one. Unfortunately there's a lot more that's wrong with the movie besides that kid.
Character motivations were the absolute caricatures of super hero movies. I mean, Tony Stark ignores Killian at a party and that is the reason that he became evil? Come on, are we supposed to believe this? Come up with something more interesting and unique, please. The dialogue between the characters was extremely poorly written, it wasn't funny and witty at all like in the first one. I laughed only once (the bit about one of the baddies throwing away his gun). Otherwise the jokes were simply cheap. The Mandarin plot twist was so bad. The film went way overboard with it, I just couldn't buy Ben Kingsley's acting in it. Also, why would you essentially sacrifice a villain of Mandarin's caliber for laughs? I was really annoyed about that, they could've made a great character out of him. Then the burning people? Luckily their clothes don't burn off though. The end fight was just so overdone, they went full Transformers on it. Usually there's only one or two Ironman suits in the fights so there's at least some tension. In the end fight there's dozens and dozens of them. Completely unexciting.
All in all, the plot was clichéd and dull and the writing horrible. Something just felt to be terribly off with this film. The movie relies on its CGI battles to deliver thrills to the audience in hopes that the audience forgets about the horrid plot and dialogue. But how could we be emotionally invested in these battles if we don't care about the characters? Don't waste your time on this.