Walking out of Iron Man 2, I realized I got exactly what I had expected going in. That’s not to say that my expectations were poor, they were just simple. Iron Man 2, like many big name sequels, such as James Bond’s Quantum of Solace, went the way of bigger action and explosion at the expense of storytelling and acting. However, this generalization was thankfully not entirely true. Though some of the plethora of supporting performances were weak and the story was far more decentralized and unfocused than the first, Robert Downey Jr. once again captured Tony Stark to the letter, while director Jon Favreau brought the film’s level of action up to a more entertaining if somewhat ridiculous level.
The film central plot follows Tony Stark, newly revealed as the superhero Iron Man, as he “privatizes” world peace, and the introduction of villains Antov Vanko or “Whiplash” (Mickey Rourke), and his “sponsor” Tony Stark parallel Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell). Returning are Tony’s assistant/Stark Industries CEO/love interest Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltron) and Colonel James Rhody (now played by Don Cheadle), Tony’s friend and eventual partner as War Machine.
To be frank, the film has a very weak central story; instead, it has a large group of sub-plots, such as Rhody becoming War Machine (if you don’t know what that means, just know he gets an iron man suit), Tony’s sickness due to palladium poisoning (due to the arc reactor core running his heart), and Nick Fury (Samuel Jackson) and Natasha Romanov (Scarlett Johansson) as SHIELD (again, if you don’t read comics, its a government agency recruiting superheroes). Though none of these sub plots are particularly poor or pointless, they leave the film feeling a little too jumbled, as if they tried to jam several movies into one.
The supporting cast was hit and miss. Downey captured Stark’s obnoxious flawed, and emotionally charged nature to the letter. As with the first movie, he was the major highlight of the film. Rockwell’s performance was also strong, as the wanna-be Tony Stark with an evil corporate twist. Cheadle’s overly subdued Rhody was a slight disappointment, as I had hoped for an improvement from Terrence Howard’s lack-luster performance in the first movie. Rourke as Vanko was fine, though his actions in the film were far cooler than his actual lines, but I was glad to see Rourke not go down the road of overplayed, campy villains and find some kind of middle ground. To be honest, I was disappointed that Rourke didn’t get more screen time, but as I said earlier, the film’s plethora of sub-plots lead to little development for Vanko.
After the first movie’s somewhat short and unsatisfying final battle, Favreau chose to go all out on the action, with an impressive final battle as well as well-paced action throughout. However, this may be hit or miss for some, as the increased action does come at the expense of the overall story. Where the first was more believable, the second went to the realm of the ridiculous. The writing followed this as well, going for a goofier, comic book feel (Samuel Jackson’s first line, “Sir, I’ll have to ask you to step out of the doughnut.”)
