Other Reviews in this Series.
Director: Jon Favreau
Writer: Justin Theroux
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, John Slattery, Gary Shandling, Paul Bettany
Runtime: 124 mins.
2010
Iron Man made a splash in the cultural landscape by being tight, fun, propulsive, and sleek. Iron Man 2 has the distinction of sharing none of those qualities. Instead it is nasty, morose, choppy, and kind of pointless. The sheer watchability of the cast is perhaps the one thing that prevents Iron Man 2 from being a total chore.
This film more than any other showcases the growing pains of Hollywood's first cinematic universe. With only Iron Man and the decent The Incredible Hulk under their belt, Marvel set out to capitalize on the promise of the famous Nick Fury post-credit coda. Unsurprisingly this meant cranking out a sequel to their 2008 smash hit with the same filmmaker at the helm. But this also meant rushing into the production and shoehorning in a cavalcade of shared universe elements that cripple any coherent narrative that may have existed otherwise.
It's clear watching the film that every story element is structured around predetermined action setpieces. At one point everybody stops what they're doing to attend a Formula 1 racing event for no reason that I can recall. That includes the villain, who confronts Tony Stark on the racetrack even though he would have had no way of knowing Stark would make himself vulnerable by driving on the track, let alone show up to the event in the first place. Clearly all of this transpires just for the cool image of Whiplash wrecking a bunch of Formula 1 cars. The film bubbles over with conveniences that eke over into nonsense.
The contrivances are everywhere. Perhaps the most egregious is Nick Fury showing up just because he happens to know Tony is dying, and just because he happens to know the key to Tony's survival is in his father's work. Then Tony happens to see a message that his father happened to leave for him about how important he is. Yet even though this should be the Eureka moment, it is not; Tony then takes a break from working to drive to Pepper and exchange some dialogue in a scene that accomplishes nothing, other than that as he is walking out of the office he happens to look at a topographical map of his father's Expo, which just so happens to also be the blueprint for a new element that just so happens to be what Tony needs to survive. And how would Howard Stark have known that Tony would be captured by terrorists, only to save himself by creating an iron suit that is slowly poisoning him because he lacks the very nonexistent element that Howard half-discovered? It's the most idiotic plot edifice this side of Batman v Superman.
The plotting is plodding, dumb, and frequently absent. I can't comprehend why this movie is over two hours long when it feels like every scene is stretching for time. There are whole scenes that pass before our eyes with no purpose beyond throwing familiar characters at each other for a few rounds of verbal sparring. Yet even this lacks charm. Iron Man 2 really serves to highlight the fine line between witty and shitty. Downey and Paltrow sparked with each other in Iron Man, but in Iron Man 2 they behave like a cad and a nag. Part of this is certainly because there is no narrative structure for them to pin their scenes on, so the dialogue rolls over us like mediocre improv. Part of it is because Downey is tasked with playing a dying man in the vaguest and most formless of ways, a role that even his massive reserves of charisma cannot redeem. Part of it is that the film introduces Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in a base and shallow manner--as a sexual object. Sure, there are moments when she subverts that expectation, but the damage has already been done. Not only does this lead to a bunch of fluffy non-scenes meant to advertise future Avengers team-ups, but it leaves Johansson without a character to play, and sabotages Tony's character as he ogles his new buxom redheaded assistant right in front of Pepper. Meanwhile, Tony is nasty to Rhodey to the point that they get into a drunken besuited fist fight, and Whiplash spends the majority of his role sitting around getting whined at by Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer. The film makes it unbelievably hard to like any of these characters.
That said, there is a hefty amount of glitz and glamour that helps this pill of inanity go down smooth. There are a handful of iconic moments among the mire, like Tony's, "I have successfully privatized world peace," or the donning of the suit-case. Rourke and Rockwell do enjoyable work in their half-baked roles. The action is numbing, but generally fun to watch. It's clearly a reaction to silly complaints about the small amount of action in the first Iron Man. All of the fight sequences feel like they last at least 40% longer than they really need to. But the effects are cool, albeit the least impactful and coherent of the trilogy.
Folks argue that Age of Ultron was crippled by superhero overload, with too many threads to juggle to possibly be coherent. That may be true (we'll soon see how Civil War handles this critique), but it just comes down to how you do it. Iron Man 2 gets overloaded by a comparably minuscule amount of shared universe baggage, and manages to fumble every opportunity to capitalize on its iconic characters. Clearly this movie was a regretful stepping stone in Marvel's quest to figure out their producer-driven, longevity-focused model.
1.5 / 5 BLOBS
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