Review of Iron Man 2 (2010) by Liam C — 28 Jul 2014

I remember when I left the movie theatre after seeing this, the general consensus out of everyone there was just that it was average movie, everyone else I knew who watched this felt the same and after watching it again many years later my opinion hasn't really changed. Iron Man 2 feels more forced and less fun than the original movie and feels like it was forced to dilute its plot to incorporate The Avengers in some way.

However, at the start it's great, it starts off right after the last one did, Tony Stark cracking jokes and it all seems to be breezy light heated fun but before long I really started to feel the length. I understand that character development is needed in a movie for it to be interesting but it just comes off that Tony Stark was just watered down to be an angsty teen with daddy issues, it didn't really fit the character. It makes sense having a character doing stupid and loud stuff to block out things they don't want to remember- it happens, but it doesn't fit Stark's character, it doesn't feel like it'd be something he would do and came off as obnoxious and of course was no where to be seen before or after this scene.

The story is also pretty weak, it's all over the place and doesn't have a clear direction, as soon as Nick Fury showed up this movie took a dive. I don't know the guy but looking at his filmography, Jon Faverau makes movies for the right reasons but it comes across like he was forced to put The Avengers somewhere in here, it takes the focus off of what you came here to see- Iron Man- and just drags everything out, it's just one big ad for what's to come, which now that The Avengers is out, is dated. Another minor negative, the suits only seemed to have sound effects whenever they felt like it. When the suits are in combat they're quiet but when they're doing something simple like looking around they sound like cliched robots and it was distracting.

The final fight was also over insultingly quickly, they spend all this time building up this rather thinly plotted villain and it's all over just as soon as it has begun. Mickey Rourke doesn't do a bad job at all but between everything else going on and being paired up with a quite frankly useless Sam Rockwell for a majority of the movie, he just isn't given that much to do. Sam Rockwell gave a fine performance but his character was lame and was taken out of the equation like he was a petty thug. Robert Downey Jr. is the glue that holds all of this together and he tries hard but not even he can hide how average this movie is. That being said, it's better than the 3rd movie, but that isn't saying a whole lot, quite a lot of things are better than the 3rd movie. Someone just put too much water in the beer for this one, unfortunately.