Review of Iron Man 2 (2010) by Jason L — 07 Sep 2014

Two scenes from the first Iron Man stick out to me. The first is the one where he suits up in the red and gold Mark III for the first time and flies to the Middle East, just in time to stop a kid's father from getting killed by a bunch of radical militants. He lands with a vengeance, takes out the militants in just under ten seconds, then lets the mob do as they will with the leader. The second scene was when Tony Stark was crawling to find the original mini-arc reactor after Obediah had just ripped the improved one from his chest, and was about to die when "Dummy", his overzealous robotic droid, hands it to him. Both of these scenes carried substantial dramatic weight, thanks mostly due to a script that skillfully set them up.

I mention this because, when trying to ponder what it is about Iron Man 2 that was lacking for me, this is what I come up with: as fun as the movie is, as good as most of the performances were, and for all of its wit and action and special effects, there is really no part of the sequel that packs a dramatic punch for me. To be sure, there were a lot of scenes that were cool and well-written, but they were disparate and separated by other scenes that fell flat.

Worse, the central character plot - Tony's war with his own self, in both mind and body - never really hits home. It starts off well enough, with Tony predictably keeping his cards close to the chest, but the shenanigans in which he engages are so comedic that it's as if the writers aren't any more willing to maturely confront the gravity and ramifications of the subject matter than Tony himself. It's one thing to break the tension with moments of levity (see: Aliens); it's another thing entirely to never really let the audience feel the weight of the tension to begin with. And that's setting aside the slipshod in which the issue is resolved ("The Flushing Meadow Park globe! Of course! How stupid can I be?").

The new characters/actors are a mixed bag. Sam Rockwell knocks Justin Hammer out of the park with a strange obsessive fixation on Tony Stark that combines envious malevolence with obsequious hero worship; Hammer wants Stark's respect almost as much as he wants his defeat.

Scarlett Johannsen... Yeah, she's beautiful. And sexy. But she lacks... gravitas. Say what you want about whether Jennifer Garner (Elektra) and the chick who played the Silk Spectre in Watchmen were right for their respective roles, but they were always convincing. Sadly, Scarlett never really clinches the Black Widow, so that entire subplot was a washout.

And Mickey Rourke... What can I say? He was amazing in a role that was as woefully underwritten as Darth Maul. And I don't just mean screen time. Despite being the villain of the piece, we are never truly given a reason to hate him other than the fact that he wants to kill Tony Stark. Without any real villainous motive other than pure revenge, there's never really a heck of a lot at stake. Oh, sure, the drones attack a bunch of people, but, by not setting up the true depths to which Ivan Vanko is willing to go to kill Stark, the film doesn't earn the sense of impending danger that we are supposed to feel.

I'm probably nitpicking a heck of a lot more than I should. I grant you this. But, heck, this is the shit I think about when I leave a movie theater. I dug the flick, and will probably see it again before the year is up ... I just wished it aimed a bit higher.