New Movie Review - Iron Man 2

And the movie summer of 2010 has begun, the first entry is Iron Man 2. As most will have already seen it before reading this I will go heavy into spoilers so if you haven't seen it, crawl out from under your rock go see it , then read this review.

I find it hard to truly approach this movie from a review stand point. I really enjoyed the first film and the biggest part of that enjoyment was the surprise. I didn't have any expectations and I hadn't given the plot any thought. Not so for this movie, thanks to the trailers and my knowledge of comics I had a guess for what this movie would contain and I was completely correct. This took away my anticipation for what would happen next making my enjoyment of the movie solely reliant on the performance of the actors and the action sequences.

For the action sequences, I feel that they went 2 for 3. The sequence at Monte Carlo was great, it felt like Iron Man was in danger and Whiplash was great. The final fight scene was also pretty good and had some real good moments and got me excited. The only one that fell flat was the first fight between Iron Man and War Machine. I just wanted it to end. There was no danger in it and it telegraphed how the final fight would end, which I wish would have been more inventive then going with the "Ghostbusters" ending of them crossing the beams.

The characters from this movie transferred over well from the first movie, but are beginning to suffer from becoming one note characters. Robert Downey Jr., while terrific, is making Tony Stark a little too eccentric. Gwenyth Paltrow made Pepper Potts too flustered and everyone else seemed to have an endless list of jokes to tell. That being said, I did enjoy the performances from all the actors, but in the next film I need to see a little drama. My favorite performance came from Micky Rourke, because he had a balance between drama and comedy. Everyone else seemed to think their main job was making jokes. Again this works here, but if the next movie continues this pattern I will probably be upset.

Now lets get to the actual plot. The plots for the previous movie and this one really aren't that cerebral. They are simple so I shouldn't really be let down that I wasn't surprised. For those unfamiliar with the comics, the movie combines elements of a story line called "Armor Wars" which involved Justin Hammer trying to build Iron Man suits and "Demon in a Bottle" which focuses on Stark's drinking problem. While I wish they could have made that dark turn into his drinking problem, I realize that this would be opposite to the tone and feeling that the movie series has built up. However, I do feel that they could have delved a little deeper into the topic. The only really bad turn I found was with the use of the Black Widow. I know why she was there, anyone with eyes knows why she is in this movie. That being said her character added little to the movie. Her character did not need to be there. Everything that she did could have been explained in a different way or performed by someone else. Except for some obvious assets, her character added nothing to the movie. For those that missed it, there was a scene after the credits. In it, we got a glimpse of the hammer of Thor, which is the next Marvel movie that will come out next year. While I am excited for this movie, the hammer did look a little plastic.

The movie took most of the elements that I loved about the first movie and tried to add a few new elements. Some of these worked and some didn't. Bottom line is if you liked the first movie, you will most likely like this one. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.