YouSeenThat.com: Film Review
Iron Man 2
by Jamie - May 9th 2010
Stark should have spent less time thinking about his dad.
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Memorable films, much like soppy music, or garish-smelling celebrity fragrances often have this amazing ability to summon vivid reminiscences. For us, we’ve got to travel back in time almost two years to the day. This was back in an era when Justin Beiber was just another Canadian lady boy of questionable talent. Back in an era when 'Twilight' was merely the soft, diffused light from the sky when the sun is below the horizon. Here we were, just a couple of callipygian Australian sex gods standing on a busy street corner somewhere in the middle of Rome, scoping a pack of the curvy brunettes with arses that wouldn’t quit. Just before the drool could glisten brilliantly on the pavement underfoot, and luscious dreams of motorboating hot Italian bitches massaged our mind’s eye like a five-dollar happy-ending in a King’s Cross brothel, a great injustice to red-blooded, testosterone-fuelled men everywhere befell our vision. This manifestation came in the form of a giant blue bus. As quickly as our hands had wandered down to caress our nether regions, these visions of Italian masturbatorial brilliance had vanished in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Public-fucking-transport: the double-edged sword of casual oglers and Pedobears alike. Normally it’s enough of an affront for us to reach for our M72 Light Antitank Weapons and open that smelly blue fucker up like a can of sardines, all before you could utter the words ‘mass murdering rampage’... but for some odd reason we didn’t. You’re probably wondering what had stopped us. Come to think of it, you’re also probably wondering what the hell we are smoking, or even how all of this bullshit ties into our review of Iron Man 2? No, you haven’t stumbled onto some poorly-written Lonely Planet sister site, instead, plastered garishly across the back of said blue bus, like a wino plastered out the front of his local, was an advertisement for the original Iron Man film.
Tenuous link, granted. Anywho, a couple of days later, and figuratively within hours of stepping-off the plane, back onto home soil, we gathered the pussy posse and rushed out to mix it with the great unwashed in cinema land. We had an inkling that Iron Man was either going to be ‘the shit’, or just plain shit. Based on the quality of the trailers, our hard-on for Robert Downey Jr, and the buzz on the proverbial grapevine, we had a very strong feeling that Iron Man was going to be the shit. Fortunately, we were on the money. In our opinion Iron Man turned out to be one of the most entertaining comic book adaptations in ages, effortlessly trouncing that emo dickbag Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spiderman, even with both metallic hands tied firmly behind his back.
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Without doubt, Iron Man’s cuisine reigned supreme.
Two years later and along came to inevitable sequel. Picking-up from directly from the end of the first film, Iron Man 2 presents us with a world now aware of Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) dual life as the armoured superhero Iron Man. Facing pressure from the United States government to share his new technology with the military, billionaire inventor Stark must team-up with his friend James "Rhodey" Rhodes (Don Cheadle) in order to confront new, and increasingly powerful enemies in the form of Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) and Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell).
Now before we even get into the review proper, you are all probably dying to know if Iron Man 2 is better than the original. That’s the first thing anyone asks us. Well, that, and whether we can remove our hand from the buttocks of their underage children. Now being the upstanding reviewers we are, we’re not going to fuck you around by dragging this out any longer than we have to. The simple answer is ‘no’. In our not-so-humble opinion, Iron Man 2 didn’t even come close to the 2008 original. From the first frame to the closing credits, no, not even close. There, we said it. Feel free to continue reading our review if you can be bothered, and if you’re lucky, we might even get around to making some logical points as to why we didn’t think it lived up to the original. Maybe. We’re just winging this review-writing caper as we go along.
So? What’s wrong with Iron Man 2?
Okay, there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with Iron Man 2 per se. The simple fact is that Iron Man 2 was doomed to mediocrity from the very beginning. Before a solitary word had been put to paper, and long before the sequel was even green lit, Iron Man 2 was bound to fall victim to what we often dub ‘the curse of the sequel’. Let’s face it, it’s bloody difficult to craft a sequel that surpasses the original film – just ask the guys behind Weekend At Bernie’s 2. How in the world are you supposed to top a film that was as clever, entertaining, and as slick as the original Iron Man? You can’t. In the words of Metallica, it’s sad but true. The bread and butter of any superhero film is the origin of the character, or more specifically, the story of how our hero becomes said hero: that life-changing event which sets our character on the path of greatness; the trying and often comical journey to hone their skills; putting their moral fortitude to the test against a seemingly unbeatable enemy. You know, all the cool shit we already saw in the first Iron Man? It’s all been done before.
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From the opening scenes it was evident that Iron Man 2 lacked something. It’s hard to put our finger on exactly what it was, but it seemed to lack the pizzazz and crackle of excitement generated during the first ten or fifteen minutes of the original Iron Man. Compared to the great scenes involving the introduction of Tony Stark, the weapons demonstration and subseqsuent ambush from the original Iron Man, Iron Man 2 presents us an incredibly dull and generic introduction of the new character Ivan Vanko (Whiplash for the nerds), and some flashy scene involving Iron Man plummeting to earth from a cargo plane - a lame attempt to recapture that memorable AC/DC-blaring Humvee ride from the original. Twenty minutes in and we were looking at our watches wondering if this was *it*. This didn’t feel at all like Iron Man. Sure, Iron Man was clunking around on the screen, and Tony Stark was up to his usual flashy, playboy antics, but it was just... well... a whole load of meh. Sadly the affair didn’t improve a great deal after those twenty-odd minutes. Without the origin storyline to fall back on, the audience is rapidly thrust between three or four barely interesting story arcs: Tony Stark being harassed by the United States military to give up his beloved Iron Man suit; his battle with blood poisoning from Palladium (a.k.a. we were too chicken shit to do a dark and adult look at Tony’s alcohol abuse, so this will do), Ivan Vanko trying to kill him, and Stark’s business rival Justin Hammer’s attempt to create a robotic army for the government. Without giving away too much of the plot, if we haven’t already, let’s just reiterate and say that it all felt a bit, meh. The fun of the original journey is gone. Any character development we saw in Iron Man 2 was minimal, and quite frankly, not that interesting.
So the plot wasn’t that great. How about the action scenes? Well, if we were to be honest, we could probably say they were on par with the original, however for some inexplicable reason, they weren’t particularly memorable. Save for the Iron Man/War Machine team-up toward the end, it’s hard to even remember many of the action setpieces in the film. It’s highly likely that we have the very ordinary plot to thank for that, or maybe it’s the decades of drug abuse and the onset Alzheimer’s kicking-in. We suspect it’s the former, not the later, given that we can quite easily and vividly remember the setpieces from the original Iron Man, but for a film we only viewed a few days ago, we draw a blank. Shrug. Oh yeah, there was that scene with Whiplash whipping the race cars in half... that was pretty cool... but aside from those two, eh, who knows. Meh. Back to the crackpipe for us.
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Cast-wise Iron Man 2 brings back pretty much all of the original characters and actors from the first film, with one notable exception: Don Cheedle replaces Terrance Howard as James Rhodes, a.k.a. War Machine. Apparently there was some pay dispute regarding Howard, or more to the point, it appears that not everyone was a fan of his exorbitant pay check from the first film, and hence his disappearance from the second. Now as much as we love Don Cheedle, we did kind of notice that he seemed a little out of place in a popcorn flick, almost like he had just realised that he accidently wandered into the womens fitting room at his local Kmart. Who knows? Anyway, aside from a change to the token black character, Downey Jr. returns to steal the screen as the irrepressible Tony Stark, and Gwyneth Paltrow continues to chew on the scenery as the dull-as-dishwater Pepper Potts. How the fuck Paltrow ever made it big in Hollywood is beyond us. Getting caught flashing your bush every second week by the paparazzi does not cement you into the A-list of female actresses - just ask Sharon Stone. Yeck. We still have nightmares after seeing that hairy mound of pubes. Oh, and before we go off on an anti-Gwyneth rant, let’s not forget to give a shout-out to some of the new characters: veteran tough guy Mickey Rourke playing the crazy Russian, Ivan Vanko, the delectable Scarlett Johansen, as Natasha Romanoff, and Sam Rockwell as the sad and pathetic Justin Hammer. Rourke obviously has the chops to play a convincing baddie, even if the guy is campily (is that a word) swinging a couple of whips like there’s no tomorrow, and Miss Johansson definitely knows how to work that arse in a pair of tight leather pants... glossing over the fact that if we were to be balanced and critical, her acting is fractionally less suspect than her pal Gwyneth Paltrow. Come to think of it, Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer probably topped the list of new characters in Iron Man 2 – Stark’s rival had some of the best lines in the film.
Overall, Iron Man 2 is a solid superhero sequel - solid, but nothing more. Anyone with half a brain knew that it was going to be incredibly difficult to follow-up the amazing 2008 original, and sadly, Iron Man 2 missed the mark, akin to Tony Stark relieving himself inside of his metal suit after a heavy night on the turps. Most of it found the target, but equally as much dribbled its way down the side of his legs and filled his boots. It’s almost as if someone has tried to recreate a great cake recipe without properly measuring the ingredients – it’s edible, but pretty flat, chewy and uninspiring. The plot is okay, but a little too ‘busy’, and without the origin storyline to hold it together, it becomes a bit tedious. The action sequences are pretty decent, but lacking the gravitas of the original. The humour is still there, but far from the clever, wittiness of the first Don’t get us wrong, all of the elements of the first film were there in some fashion, but Iron Man 2 is definitely missing... well... something. There’s no way in hell we’ll be rushing out to the cinema to watch Iron Man 2 again, like the three times we did with the original Iron Man.
The A.D.D. Version:
The sequel fails to deliver the fun and excitement of the original Iron Man, but still worth a watch.
Random Observations:
See This Film If You Like:
The YouSeenThat.Com Popcorn Rating:
Not as great as the original, but reasonably solid.
How does the YouSeenThat.Com Popcorn Rating work?
Well, it works on the theory that the more you enjoy a film, the less likely you are to be aimlessly shoving salty corn kernels into your gob, and a little more focused on what is happening in front of you on the big screen. Therefore, the more popcorn in our scorers bucket, the better the film. Pretty simple, huh?. Think of it as an inverse scoring system.