Iron man 2 Review
Director: Jon Faverau
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, and Don Cheadle
Original Release Date: May 7th 2010
After the massive success that was Iron man, Marvel studios quickly leapt at a chance to make a sequel to their first big hit before the Avengers hit theatres. They were so adamant on getting a sequel out that they shortened production time from three years to only two, which is quite a massive feat. How exactly did Faverau pull a movie of this scale off in half the time that it took to make the first Iron man? The answer is simple, he didn’t and unfortunately for Faverau and Marvel Studios Iron man 2 was the first big misstep in the MCU.
Taking place six months after the first movie, Iron man 2 illustrates the political repercussions that Tony Stark and his Iron man suit have made on the world. Everyone wants in on the technology, and the United States government want Stark to turn it in in order to replicate the tech. However this isn’t the least of Starks problems, his arc reactor is slowly killing him and time is running short for the billionaire, but when a vengeful Russian replicates Starks own technology the world slowly starts to crumble around Tony Stark.
This is honestly the most compacted version I can think of for the plot that is Iron man 2. This movie is cluttered with sideplots that would have made the little summary I gave above an entire three paragraphs. This is the fault however of Marvel studios and their need to churn out a second Iron man movie. Now when I first saw Iron man 2 I absolutely hated it, but as is the case with most Iron man movies I revisited it before I saw the Avengers and I came to a new conclusion. This isn’t a horrible movie, its just a big disappointment, and when you think about it how could it not be? Everything was working against this movie. The first film is near perfection and is still one of the best in the MCU, the short time it took Faverau to shoot this film would easily bog down on the quality of the film, and Marvel studios themselves went and pulled a full Sony by heavily involving themselves in the editing process of the films final cut. Even the actors of the movie (especially Mickey Rourke) have expressed their distaste in the movie.
I’m not one to dwell on the negatives first when there are positives in the movie, and frankly the only real positive I have with this is the cast. Most of the familiar faces are back, you’ve got Downey as Stark and Paltrow as Potts. However this movie does like to go out of it’s way to make the two original cast members very unlikeable.
Tony Stark is dying in this movie, he’s hit rock bottom and for Stark there is no other option but death. Most of the character development that was made in the first film for Tony is completely thrown out the window, it seems he didn’t really learn anything from his struggles last time around. Sure his narcissistic attitude is still in check, he wouldn’t be Tony Stark without it, but most of Iron man was dedicated on Tony becoming a better man and being an honourable person and a hero. Like I said in my Iron man review after the first film it seemed like Marvel studios completely forgot what made Tony such a (arguably) likeable character. They took the heart out and just added the snarky humour, and this movie is on full gear with comedy. Now I don’t necessarily hate comedy, nor the light tone that inhabits most of these movies, but there is a time and place for humour and it seems like Stark just can’t stop, especially when he’s dealing with death and the threat of the government replicating his suit (which they do). Just because he’s dying does not mean that the character should become a bigger ass than he was in the first film. Many people I know who knew nothing about the character of Tony Stark had no idea that he was an alcoholic, it’s one of the characters most famous arcs. Boy where they surprised, and I’m assuming everyone else was who had no idea who the character was (and face it Iron man was a c-lister at best before the first movie) to because Tony Stark is one sloppy drunk in this movie.
Hey kids, want to see Iron man pee in his suit and act like a complete and utter depressing train wreck? Well you’ll get tons of that in this movie! Tony is hardly likeable at all I don’t understand how people like him, especially in this movie. His ego has skyrocketed to godlike status, something which one the films villain addresses early on. Sure he’s funny and I laugh quite a bit at his jokes, but just because a movie is funny does not mean it’s good. This isn’t a comedy, it’s an action movie, and yes I know that tons of action movies have comedic parts to them, but if the humour isn’t serving the plot than it shouldn’t be in the movie, it’s just filler trying to disguise the flaws in a film.
Pepper Potts on the other hand is more annoying than anything. Because of Tony’s attitude throughout the movie we see her only when she’s upset, a typical Mary Jane Spider-man 3 scenario. Every scene Gwenyth Paltrow is in Pepper just gripes at Tony’s immaturity. Sure, he’s being a complete idiot and she’s annoyed, but at least show us one scene where she’s happy. Remember all that good chemistry from the first film? It’s completely gone in this, Pepper is annoyed at Tony because he is clearly hiding something from her, and instead of acting like Tony normally would he instead acts like a jealous 13 year old boy leaving clues in order for her to figure out that he’s dying. But hey, why couldn’t he just tell her upfront? I thought Pepper Potts was the only person Tony could trust in the world, he even said so in the first movie when she dips her hand in his chest. Now of course I don’t want Pepper to just smile and let Tony get away with what he’s doing, I’m not like that, of course she has every right to be mad at Stark it’s just that it isn’t handled properly. She’s not really given anything to do in the movie, unlike the first one where she played an integral part in Stane’s demise.
Now because this is Iron man 2 what would be better than one Iron man? Two, and that’s what we get with Rhodey as he continues the snippet that was hinted at in the last movie. Unfortunately the character had to be recast and is now played by Don Cheadle. I really don’t have that much of a problem with the recasting in this movie, normally I’d be pretty upset because it’s one of my major pet peeves when it comes to movies, however Cheadle surpasses Terrence Howard in the role. Rhodey is given a lot more to do this time around than the first one, he’s torn between his orders from the military to get the suit from Tony, and protecting his best friends interests. Now Howard was great in the role but after watching Iron man 2 you can sort of see how Howard was “sleeping” through the role, Cheadle acts like he cares. Every fan of the character was waiting for the moment when Rhodey would become War Machine, who I frankly prefer over Iron man. A big portion of the movie is dedicated to this origin story of sorts, and is a major subplot in multitude of subplots that are scattered in this movie.
You only really get a good look at War Machine at the films climax and unfortunately Marvel has seen to it that we don’t get to see much of War Machine at all because the suit hasn’t made an appearance since this movie. Maybe Age of Ultron will fix this because Rhodey is slated to return there, the extent of his involvement in the plot though is currently unknown.
Back when this movie first came out we were seeing a revival in Mickey Rourke’s career. The Wrestler had reignited the old 80’s stars career and Iron man 2 was the second film on the slate for the actor. Rourke plays one of the films villains Ivan Vanko, or Whiplash as he’s known in the comics. I find it strange that they chose Whiplash as a villain because he’s fairly low on the roster when it comes to Iron man’s rogues gallery, perhaps Marvel was hoping to have the same success with Whiplash as they did with Iron man, unfortunately the villain falls flat and it’s not entirely Rourke’s fault. Vanko (he’s never called Whiplash) is actually a pretty interesting character, he’s out for revenge against Tony due to something Tony’s father did to Vanko senior in the past. This leads to a really good conflict and throughout the first 40 minutes of the movie Vanko is a pretty good villain. His plan is unique in that he doesn’t want to kill Tony, he wants to watch the world crumble around him and “watch god bleed”. The great thing about this is that he actually succeeded in his plans only 10 minutes after he first encounters Stark.
After that he’s stolen by Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) who I personally see as Iron man 2’s main baddie. Once that happens everything that made the character interesting slowly devolves where Vanko plays dumb Russian for two hours. You can see during the first part of the movie that Faverau and co. wanted to do something truly interesting and unique with Vanko, unfortunately Marvel wanted a movie out as soon as possible and Vanko quickly changed from a methodical and intimidating villain to your typical comic book baddie. Rourke has also stated his complete and utter hatred for this movie, even last year when he appeared on the Late Show Rourke was asked if he hates comic book movies Rourke replies with “I don’t hate comic book movies, I hate Marvel movies”. You see Mickey Rourke actually put in a lot of work with the character, travelling to Russia for three months to get the accent down ( something Scarlett Johansson did not) and added all these layers to the character which were thrown on the cutting room floor.
This was the first time Marvel did this to a villain, and it wouldn’t be the last. When we visit a certain Phase 02 film I’ll talk about a certain pointed ear baddie who really got shafted when it came to final cut. Sure you could argue that Rourke might be talking out of his ass and trying to place the blame on someone for the poor reception the movie got, but you can see in the jail scene where Vanko explains his plot that they actually were going to go with something a little more heavy than what you’d normally expect. There’s even an alternate final showdown between Vanko and Iron man that is a huge polar opposite to what we got in the final product. Vanko started out as a guy who was just going to sit and wait for the world to destroy Tony Stark, he also apparently knows that Tony is dying. I find this strange because no one knows Tony is dying except Tony, how the heck does Vanko know that Stark is dying from the reactor? Sure you could argue that since Vanko knows arc reactor tech that he could come to an assumption that Starks dying, but really even Pepper Potts the closest person to him has no idea that he’s dying. This just makes the rest of Vanko’s plot seem redundant, he knows Tony is just going to die, that's what makes his first plan all the more terrifying at first. Not only is this Starks last week of life but his entire world is going to crumble around him. Instead Vanko decides to somehow make a gigantic Iron man suit on top of helping Hammer fix his drone army before Stark Expo and fix his whips, and he does this all in a week. It took Tony around three months to build the Marc 01, how the hell does he even accomplish this! and to top it off why would he use this suit to try and kill Tony? He knows he’s going to die and has no idea that Stark created a new element.
Like all the other Iron man movies, this one loves it’s red herring when it comes to its supposed “main antagonist”. “Whiplash” was advertised on everything, when in fact the real villain was Sam Rockwell. Now, I love Sam Rockwell he’s a great actor but he just plays a sleazier Obadiah Stane. I
Scarlett Johansson makes her first appearance as Black Widow in this movie, but she really didn’t have to be in the film. I feel like the character was shoehorned into the movie in order to get everyone excited for the Avengers, and that was the purpose of this movie. There are some parallels between Iron man 2 and last years the Amazing Spider-man 2. They were both set up movies that threw everything they could think of on the screen, now I quite enjoyed TASM 2 but they really wanted to set up their (now defunct) Spider-man Cinematic Universe and they really went out of their way to tell you that. Iron man 2 is the same, we got Captain America references, Hulk references, and every single Samuel L. Jackson scene. Nick Fury also did not need to be in this movie, he has maybe three scenes but each one is just an extended version of the stinger from Iron man 1, we already know Iron man is going to be in the Avengers you don’t need to tell us every time Nick Fury shows up for exposition dialogue. Also, what’s the point of denying Iron man a spot on the Avengers, we all know he is a member regardless of the stupid Consultant title that they throw around, he’s still an Avenger and is advertised as one.
Now one of the big problems are the subplots. This movie wanted to be so many things when really it should have just been about Tony Stark against the government and Vanko. Instead this movie has multiple threads going at the same time and it makes the movie bloated and a little boring.
At the top of my head here are all the sub plots I can think of
- Tony Stark Dying
- Rhodey becoming War Machine
- Justin Hammer trying to outdo Tony Stark
- Pepper Potts dealing with becoming Stark Industries new CEO
- Black Widow’s shadowing of Tony Stark
- Tony Stark dealing with his daddy issues and alcoholism
- Gary Shandling......why?
Now that's a lot for one two hour movie to handle. These aren’t just tiny little threads, each of these subplots are huge and take up a lot of time to wrap up. Because of this every action scene is cut short, and the final fight with Vanko is around two minutes. Of course I don’t want my movies to be just explosions and action, but come on this is a superhero movie we expect action.
I can see why Jon Faverau didn’t want to direct Iron man 3. Marvel studios own interference actually robbed us all of a pretty decent movie. Now there is still some fun to have in Iron man 2, it’s pretty funny and some of the action scenes are neat. Just lower your expectations because this movie does not even hold a candle to the original.
6/10
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