It wasn’t great, either, but my prediction was at least part-way wrong. The first half of the film was actually idiosyncratic and strong, right up until a brilliant sequence at Tony Stark’s birthday party which I have to admit I didn’t think anyone would have the guts to actually put in a summer blockbuster. Kudos. Then along comes a deus ex machina wearing an eye patch, introducing a plot element that lets us escape from the deeper issues the story almost sunk its teeth into and turning everything into a standard, meaningless physical conflict. Favreau seems to have a weakness with climaxes, he’s made them feel arbitrary and unsatisfying twice in a row now. As the director of a superhero flick, he has to get some sensational action in there to roll into the credits. I get that, and I don’t hold it against him. But since he knows it has to happen, you would think he could find a way for it to be more natural, and for it to address the deeper issues lurking behind the story. Are we seriously going to have a narcissistic egomaniac protagonist learn anything about himself by saving the day the same exact way Superman would? Shouldn’t the disasters in the end be of his own making? Isn’t that what’s more natural to this series of events?
There’s also a serious problem with threat. I dig making Tony Stark his own worst enemy, but that only works if he’s a formidable adversary for himself, and Stark isn’t unhinged enough to sustain that. Nor could he be, because how could you sell Happy Meals with that? His new bad guys are also too incompetent to really frighten us, we know how they’re going to be beaten before they do. I only feared for Tony at two parts of the movie: the first was during the excellent sequence at the race track, and the second was in his confrontation at his birthday party, which I refuse to spoil for those of you who haven’t seen it. In those moments, there was a real sense of something closing in on him, of consequences leading from his actions. The rest of the movie had too much air in it, it was just Tony goofing off in a massive playground. Yeah some killer robots showed up and stuff, but is that the best they had? Wouldn’t people like Tony’s enemies have some vague awareness that killer robots had failed to do the trick in the past? I refuse to believe men as intelligent as Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell should be relegated to playing baffoons who display this level of maniacal incompetence. What about framing him? What about destabilizing his company, or abducting Pepper Potts, or pretending to be his best friend and sowing discontent in his personal life? What “Iron Man 2″ desperately lacked was a quality villain, an antagonist who was worthy of our hero. Not to reference “The Dark Knight” compulsively, but that was one of the film’s pillars of strength: everyone sitting in that theater was afraid of the Joker, and no one was certain Batman could actually take him down.
And come to think of it, why is Sam Rockwell’s Justin Hammer such a moron anyway? I get that jealousy is a strong motivator, but only if the dude has the smarts necessary to marshal it into something destructive. He doesn’t. He’s not as smart as Tony, he’s not as good looking (no offense Rockwell, they made you look dorky on purpose), he’s not as smooth, his company isn’t as successful, and he’s nowhere near as good an engineer. So why am I afraid of this guy? Shouldn’t a villain be, oh I don’t know, a worthy adversary? I’m fine with him having an inferiority complex, but that needs to lead him somewhere that makes him a serious opponent instead of depositing him on our laps for us to pity in the third act. Rourke’s Ivan Vanko is closer, but his master plan seems to have been to er…wear a big suit and…uh…attack Tony Stark in open public. Vanko knows computers and can hack anything, so why not go into Tony’s network and turn his machines against him or something? Or make one of the suits attack Pepper, or Rhodey, or somebody. I’m just spit-balling here.
There’ a flip side, though, and a reason why I stand by my assertion that “Iron Man 2″ does not suck: the charm is still there. Against all odds, Gwenyth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. keep oozing chemistry; in my book, they’re one of the best on-screen couples around. Everything about them is so wonderfully old-school, their courtship is a battle of wits. Pepper is a strong woman whom Stark loves for her mind and her soul as well as her body, and the producers should be proud of themselves for the positive messages they’re sending to young girls everywhere. Movies like this say, “You can be successful and hard-working and not compromise your femininity, and you don’t need to walk around topless to get attention from the opposite sex.” Now if only HBO, Showtime, and everyone else on the planet would stop repeating “Have sex with as many people as possible,” but I digress.
Also, I kind of owe an apology to Scarlett Johansson. Not because her character was good, she was utterly useless, but because it was in no way ScarJo’s fault. The writers gave her an inconsequential part to play with no discernible arc, no personality (besides “bada**,” which doesn’t count as a personality), and no substantial effect on anything. My theory is simple: all of her good dialogue got siphoned off to Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury once he joined the cast late in the game. This was a mistake, because we spent more time with Johansson’s Natalie Rushman, and Fury’s life-altering advice would have had more meaning to us coming from her instead. Nonetheless, Scarlett minimized the damage by playing this superfluous sexpot with cool confidence, and looking pretty stunning in every outfit they put her in. And also, she (and her team of stunt doubles) handled the action scenes incredibly well.
I should make special mention of that, actually. When Natalie goes Biblical on some security guards late in the movie, the results are phenomenal. I’m something of an action scene connoisseur, you can’t trick me with flashy editing, and I’m telling you that the hallway fight I’m referring to is one of the more creative and jaw-dropping offerings I’ve seen in the past few years. I especially admired how unusual and exotic her fighting style was, and how the editing was relatively spacious so I could get a good look at the conflict as it happened. Shooting moves this intricate must have been a beast, but they pulled it off. Favreau now has a truly excellent hand-to-hand fight scene to his credit. Congratulations, man. Heavy props also to the choreography team and the stunt men and women who made it happen.
From what I understand, Terrence Howard was replaced because his performance wasn’t good and he was difficult to work with. Maybe that isn’t true, but that’s what I’ve heard. Perhaps Don Cheadle was a nicer guy on set, but somehow he doesn’t bring the rain here. He’s a great actor, but there was a chemistry with Howard that just isn’t sparking this time around. Even if Howard’s performance had to be edited around to make it good, the result was still positive; here, it’s just kind of neutral. Maybe the problem was the material: the script kind of took all that relationship building from the first one for granted, and perhaps if it had spent more time reminding us of how these two guys feel about one another, it’d have been better. I’m not certain it’s Cheadle’s fault, or that he wouldn’t have been just as good or better than Howard in the original, I’m just saying we needed more.
All in all, there’s enough to like about “Iron Man 2″ to give it a pass. I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t really go for it with a “Dark Knight” style sequel where the tone gets darker, the story takes bigger risks, and the characters are more complex. What they did do is kind of a wash: good enough to enjoy, and original enough to embrace on its own terms, but I suspect it falls apart on repeat viewings. Not that I’m going to find out, because I can’t imagine why I’d need to see it again.
Back to your countdown!
Just got it on BluRay and watched it again. Kewl.