Excellent flick, thoroughly entertaining. I felt like Vanko was underutilized, but the last thing I want in any movie is more Mickey Rourke, so I’m kind of torn there. Hammer made a great cerebral villain whose resources outstretched his competence, which made him a great foil for Stark.
I thought they did a great job of illustrating Tony’s slide out of control, using his impending death from palladium poisoning to narratively speed up the “Demon In A Bottle” style fall from grace without needing to resort to compressing a long drawn-out battle with alcoholism into a 2 hour film. It gave a great presentation of an egomaniac taking on too much responsibility while simultaneously spiraling further and further out of control, alienating his friends and peers, etc.
I don’t think that particular arc was wrapped up as well as it could have been, but all in all, I was satisfied with the movie.
Overall a couple of notches below the first one, but still pretty enjoyable overall. RDJ is fantastic once again as Stark and looks like he really enjoys the role. Some personal nits to pick:
Why the hell did Pepper decide to get the armor suitcase to Stark once she saw him getting into the car? It was like she totally anticipated he would get attacked on the racing track or something?
I found Vanko to be implausibly strong and tough. Happy (I didn’t know that was Favreau before I checked it in Wikipedia, cool!) drives a car into him twice and he shrugs it off? Hammer sics a couple of goons, presumably experienced and trained soldiers, on him and he neatly deals with them offscreen? I thought he was supposed to be a physicist?
Rockwell is fun to watch but it makes his Justin Hammer look like a buffoon than a believable villain. Overall, the film seems a bit lacking in tension. The scariest thing in the whole movie is Stark’s blood poisoning.
I preferred Terrence Howard as Rhodes. He had good chemistry with RDJ in the first film and you can tell that Stark and Rhodes are best buddies just by seeing them grin at each other. Cheadle’s Rhodes never seems like he could be good pals with Stark. He’s just way too straight-laced.
Black Widow’s inclusion was unnecessary for the plot and I hated the way her fights look. She holds a pose for half a second every time she defeats a goon. That just grates on my nerves.
The way Vanko kept opening his helmet’s faceguard during the final battle aggravated me too. His face is actually exposed when Stark and Rhodey shoots their repulsors at each other. Couldn’t they just aim the blasts at his face?
I thought it was right after Vanko has already destroyed the first car that she runs for Happy and the suitcase.
Didn’t they say he was in some siberian prison for 15 years or so? I mean, look at the guy. I have no problem believing he could eat those Hammer guards for lunch. Taking the hits from the car is certainly less plausible, but you can just sort of write that off to the partial exo-skeleton of his armor. I mean, obviously that wouldn’t protect him in real life, but in comic booky logic, it wasn’t any more problematic for me than anything else in the movie.
I must have misremembered then. I thought she looked alarmed when she saw Stark getting into the car and told Black Widow that she needed Happy immediately. She only asked Happy about the briefcase once she’s in the car.
I do remember her being panicked and I think confronting Black Widow about him getting into the car in the first place, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t till that first attack that she actually ran for Happy and the briefcase.
She sent Natasha/Scarlet/BW for Happy once she saw Stark getting into the car. Presumably to get him to persuade him out or something. When Vanko appears Happy finally shows up and points to the suit-case and then Pepper storms off with him.
While it took Happy apparently a good half hour to show up initially, they made good time by getting to the car, driving the car onto the track and doing a reverse half-lap all in about 30 seconds.
I think Scarlett Johansson is beautiful, but is there any chance at all we could go a couple posts without a criticism of her role in the film being refuted by “BUT SHE’S HOT HUR HUR”?
I just came back from seeing it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not perfect by any means, but a much better way to kick off blockbuster season than “Transformers 2”.
Liked: The way Hammer was portrayed-- not a mustache twirling villain so much as an annoying kid brother who’s tired of living under the shadow of his cooler, more popular big brother. I didn’t hate him so much as pity him, and I think that served the story’s purpose pretty well.
Also Liked: despite the abundance of new characters, it didn’t really feel as crowded or forced as other superhero sequels (I’m looking at you, Spider-Man 3 and 90’s Batman movies). Mind you, though, I wouldn’t have complained about more Scarlett Johansson in a skintight catsuit footage.
Also, Also Liked: I enjoyed the building of the universal mythology-- from the outright Mjöllnir appearance to the subtle callback to the Incredible Hulk, I love that they’re setting the stage for The Avengers.
Hated: the outright theft of the 2.0 (although by my count, it would be 3.0, right? Or was the one from the cave a Beta?) armor-- it was bad enough that Rhodes somehow justified stealing it, but Hammer tried to pass it off as his own work at Stark Expo?
Break even: I initially hated the kid vs. Hammeroid scene, but I was won over when Iron Man gave him credit for the kill.
Overall, though, good time at the movies. Probably the best we can expect until Inception, or possibly (and this is a dark horse) A-Team.
Oh yeah, I followed that part fine, and I’m ok with it. That the palladium got into his blood is a bit wonky, but I can roll with it. I’m thinking of the scene when he puts in te new power source, and it does…something that makes no sense except on the “he put in a better power source so of course he must power up” level.
First I have to say that Tony Stark is a little too Rusty Venture in this movie for me. I think it worked, but it was just a little weird to see the trope used straight when it’s so thoroughly lampooned in Venture Brothers.
The opening scene with the stage, Iron-Man-Solid-Gold-Dancers, and souvenir gloves/helmets was a little too real for me. When people play the "what if there were superheroes in real life angle, they always go the dark and violent route. But in our culture of celebrity worship, that was a lot closer to what I imagine it would be. The congressional hearings scene, while a little hammy, also felt like the other side of the “real world” coin: lots and lots of boring meetings with the government.
I thought the movie mostly was great. The entire Rhodes-suit theft thread didn’t work for me though. Rhodes over-reacts by going for the suit (Tony is endangering people, but he didn’t even try to intervence any other way), then he steals it which seemed out of character. Then, he and 1 other guy meet with the CEO of a arms company to pimp out the suit in an otherwise empty hangar? Those scenes got us where we were going, and while it’s possible to fll in the blanks (escalating tension with Tony, torn allegiances for his friend / country, secrecy respectively), they didn’t actually earn their way there. Also, nitpick (among many), but: the air force has a Iron-Man suit removal machine?
Nobody commented on the anime cherry blossom droid shot? I thought it was cute.
I have a theory about the Whiplash fight. The writers knew that they’d gotten all the mileage out of men in metal suits punching each other that they were going to, so they cut the fight short on purpose. Wed already seen robots cut in half with lasers and chewed up by miniguns, so dropping the intensity to another fistfight was going to be anticlimactic regardless (which is why we got neutron laser explosion thingie). The only reason Whiplash appeared in person was to give the audience a sense of closure about the villain, and to make them feel there was a “big bad”. The real “boss battle” was, of course, the droids.
Which brings me to my next point. If there is an Iron Man 3 (which we can probably assume there will be), they can’t make it just about guys in metal suits punching. They’ll have to do either a smart villain (Mandarin), or a different kind of monster (Hulk = Hulkbuster Armor!), or something like that. I noticed in the credits, there was somebody credited as “10 Rings Thug” (Maybe the guy who gave whiplash his passport?), so its possible they’re keeping that alive.
A friend of mine mentioned that while Iron Man might not have another movie within him, Tony Stark does. I mostly agree with this. The reason there were no stakes is because Iron Man wasn’t in peril. Like Superman, he’s never really in danger because the man inside the suit is what fails, not the suit (The first movie was an origin story. You aren’t really the character yet in an origin story). And aside from the action-pron, the best scene for me was the Pepper-Stark teleconference during the big fight (“I was going to make you an omelette and tell you!”), because that’s the core of the characters, not the metal flying men.
I loved Happy’s fight scene. Like the opening scene, it did a good job of grounding the movie a little bit.
“Tastes like coconut.”
I really disagree on the action scenes. I thought the Black Widow action bits were really readable and stylized without being too over the top slow-mo. Basically it hit ust the right “Whoa, cool” zone for me.
That is also how I read it, but nobody else I went with thought that.
Sam Rockwell was like a nouveau riche version of Stark with spray on tan hands ( I’m sure that was his idea). It was just the small things he does in that movie to look like an ass and then goes completely over the top and it works. That guy is an underrated actor.
I liked that the fight scenes were quite followable. You could clearly see Tony ripping a drones guts out, faces splattered with oil., etc. The opposite of Transformers.
