This document and the following review are identical so feel free to read whichever is more convenient
Spoiler Warning
In 2008, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU, for short) was launched with Iron Man. A little over a month later, the second installment was released, a largely forgotten movie, the Incredible Hulk. And then in 2010, Iron Man 2 was released. Hopes were high after the success of the first movie, which boasted great writing, effects, action and, most importantly, a great performance by Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark. His character arc in the original Iron Man film remains one of the best we’ve seen in a superhero origin film.
Unfortunately, Iron Man 2 seemingly decided to ignore everything good about the first film, and became easily one of the worst MCU films to date. While it’s not one of the all-time worst superhero films (though that’s a pretty low bar) it does seem to fail in a lot of the important categories. To be completely honest, I didn’t think it was a bad movie when I first saw it. But over the past decade, it’s gotten worse and worse the more I’ve watched it.
One of the most obvious flaws of the film is how crowded it is. I’m going to set aside a lot of the convoluted plot points for now, and instead focus on something else that causes this problem. While the original Iron Man was a completely contained film, with only a few hints at where they were going in later films, half of Iron Man 2 feels like a lengthy commercial for the Avengers film they were working on. Obviously, Black Widow is introduced, and she and Nick Fury appear sporadically throughout the movie. While Black Widow plays some role in the plot (and serves as one of the few bright spots in the film) and Samuel L. Jackson is great as Fury, most of their screen time is just devoted to reminding the audience that the Avengers is going to be a movie in two years. Captain America’s shield makes an appearance, and Coulson is dispatched to New Mexico during the film to, as is revealed in the post credits scene, investigate the appearance of Thor’s hammer. While these might not sound like much, it takes a lot of time away from a movie that only clocks in at two hours and is already juggling a lot of other plotlines.
Also, fun fact, Iron Man 2 was originally going to be released in 2011, but since Marvel already had Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger slated to release that year, they sped up production to make sure Iron Man 2 hit theatres in May 2010. Which is probably a big reason why the plot doesn’t really work or make any sense.
The movie begins with an introduction to the new villain, Whiplash, played by Mickey Rourke. We quickly learn that his father, born in the Soviet Union, used to work with Howard Stark, and was returned to his home country after betraying Stark. As such, Anton Vanko, AKA Whiplash, has lived in an impoverished area of Russia for presumably his entire life. In the span of a few minutes, he sees Tony Stark’s announcement that he is, indeed, Iron Man (from the end of the first movie) and watches his father die. He swears revenge, and goes on to create the energy whips that give him his super-villain name. At this point, it isn’t obvious just how bad this villain is going to be, so I’m going to wait to touch on that until he becomes more prominent in the story.
Back in the US, Tony Stark is reintroduced at the Stark Expo, where we quickly learn that he’s become an even bigger celebrity than he was before, now that he’s revealed his identity, as a massive crowd flocks to his demonstration. However, though his life appears to be going smoothly from the outside, Tony has discovered that the Arc reactor that keeps him alive is, in fact, poisoning him because of its palatium core, and the US government is trying to take possession of the Iron Man armor.
Both of these plotlines sound interesting, and have a lot of potential, but they are completely wasted. To make matters worse, neither of them are connected to each other and the plot surrounding his armor is only loosely related to what happens with Whiplash, meaning there’s three plotlines all vying for our attention, all of which are introduced within the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Superhero movie sequels frequently show the hero dealing with multiple issues/threats as a means of further developing their character and giving the audience to see them in a variety of situations (instead of just one more story), and this has sometimes been successful. Spider-Man 2 and Superman 2 both showed the hero wanting to give up their powers for a normal life, all while dealing with a new enemy, but these plots were connected, as the changes in one plotline affected their motivations in the other. Similarly, Batman Returns sported three different villains, all with different motivations, but connected them in a way that made it feel like we were still watching one movie.
Iron Man 2’s plot is a mess, with some plot threads disappearing for long stretches of time, others not being resolved, and still others having core moments seemingly removed, as it’s not really clear how the story advances at crucial junctures. Most noticeably, this has to do with Tony handing his company over to Pepper (presumably because he’s dying), and then her later referencing that the company is falling apart because of his erratic behavior and they’re having to fend off the US government from taking his suits. It’s never fully explained why this is happening, or how she saves the company, or how Rhodey convinces them not to take his suits (I guess they just wanted the War Machine copy of his armor, but if they don’t trust Stark, why would they allow a private citizen to keep flying around in his personal Iron Man suit?)
However, I’m getting ahead of myself.
At this point in the film, the audience is just now learning that Tony is dying, and he’s keeping it hidden from all the other characters in the film. He appears before a congressional panel, where the new Rhodey actor, Don Cheedle, is introduced, and refuses to give up his Iron Man suit to Senator Stern, who heads the panel. Tony’s justification is that the armor would be extremely dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands, which includes those of Justin Hammer, the movie’s other major villain, and an incompetent rival to Tony Stark. He serves as the sole connection between the plot involving Tony’s armor and the one involving Whiplash. Depending on your tastes, Hammer will either come off as annoying or amusing (oftentimes both), but either way, he isn’t interesting or prominent enough to really make a huge impact on the movie’s quality.
As Tony continues to conceal his deteriorating condition, he ends up a spectator at a race car track, where he again runs into Justin Hammer. In his typically flamboyant fashion, Tony ends up replacing one of the drivers and taking to the race track. This, thankfully, leads into the first action sequence of the film, as Whiplash destroys Stark’s car, leaving him pinned and defenseless.
Unfortunately, this sequence doesn’t do very much for the movie, because it’s a pretty terrible action scene. First of all, before the fight even begins, Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts show up, ramming Whiplash with their car as they give Tony Stark the suitcase containing the latest version of his armor, the Mark V. At first glance, this doesn’t sound bad, until Happy Hogan backs up his car and rams Whiplash again. And again. And again. This goes on for quite a while, all while Pepper keeps trying to pass Stark the suitcase, only for Whiplash to try to hit them with his whip, miss, and then be rammed with the car again. This is as good a time as any to say that if your taste in humor involves the movie repeating the same joke over and over again, oftentimes while people are talking loudly over each other so that the audience can’t understand what they’re saying, then you will find this movie entertaining. For me personally, after these things had gone on for an hour or so, I had long since grown tired of this.
Finally, Iron Man suits up and actually fights Whiplash. At first, it seems like there might be an interesting battle, as we see Whiplash utilize a different fighting style from the typical villain in a massive armored suit (don’t worry, they’ll shamelessly clone that later in this film), with him using his whips to deflect Iron Man’s repulsors, before using them to ensnare him and fling him around the race track. And then Iron Man just walks forward, getting electrocuted by the whips, punches Whiplash, and knocks him out. The actual fighting lasts about a minute, as far more time is spent on the sequence’s set-up (which, as I said before, is pretty obnoxious), and to make matters worse, we won’t see another action sequence for another twenty minutes or so, and after that, we won’t see anymore action until the very end of the movie, giving us a grand total of three action sequences in one superhero movie. In all fairness, I have to admit Iron Man crushing Vanko’s arc reactor is a nice moment, as it ties into his impending death because of the palatium exposure and shows how that’s effecting his emotional state.
Now, in all fairness, the original Iron Man didn’t have a lot of action sequences, either. Like Iron Man 2, it mostly consisted of three action scenes, but the ones in Iron Man (the original film) felt much more fleshed out. Tony didn’t put on the suit in the cave, walk out, punch a couple of Ten Rings terrorists and then fly away; it was a full-on battle. Secondly, in the first movie, we also got to see Stark building and testing the Iron Man suit. While these aren’t action scenes, seeing him fly around the city does show us something happening, instead of what Iron Man 2 does, which is just go back and forth from one dialogue scene (almost all of which have an obnoxious amount of cross-talk) to the next. And, to make matters even worse, Iron Man 1 spent its downtime developing its characters; no one was developed in any meaningful way in this film.
The only character who has any kind of an arc is Tony Stark, as he’s dealing with his sense of mortality. This isn’t really handled that interestingly, however. All that really comes from it is that Tony spends the first half of the film depressed, and then about halfway through the film, he decides to get drunk and throw an extremely rowdy (and unsafe) birthday party for himself. Now, if you’re familiar with the Iron Man comics, you might think this is the writers leading into the famed story “Demon in a Bottle”, which detailed Tony’s struggle with alcoholism and how that negatively impacts his ability to be Iron Man.
Unfortunately, the film doesn’t really go in that direction… at all. There’s the birthday party scene, and the next day that shows Tony Stark eating donuts in the shop’s donut-shaped logo (which feels like it was only included to put in the trailer) and then Fury convinces Stark to shape up and get back to work. It’s such a waste of a great story, similarly to how the Hammer storyline seems to waste the Armor Wars arc (which showed Iron Man trying to track down stolen Stark technology that criminals had been using to power similar suits to his). Even setting aside the comic storylines, this is a waste of what could’ve been done with Stark dealing with his mortality and descending into a self-destructive spiral.
Also, his birthday party does lead into the second action scene of the movie. During the party, Rhodey shows up to tell Pepper that the US government has been hounding him to get Iron Man ‘back on watch’. Which, even by this movie’s standards, doesn’t make any sense. First of all, the previous hour of the movie seemed to be establishing the US government didn’t want Stark to be Iron Man and wanted the technology for itself. And now, they want him to be ‘back on watch’? Second, what does that even mean? At no point in either movie have they ever established that Iron Man just goes around patrolling for super-villains or danger, the way Spider-Man or Batman does. Third, even if Iron Man did operate that way, when did he go dark? He was just in a battle with Whiplash (seemingly a couple of days ago), and then returned home. Was there some time jump between these two scenes, or does the government just need Stark to be Iron Man 24/7 and can’t handle it if he takes a week off after almost dying, despite the fact that they’ve been trying to confiscate his armor?
Anyway, Rhodey shows up, puts on the Mark 2 armor (the silver one with the icing problem from the first film) and tells Tony to put the armor away. They then engage in an awkwardly choreographed fight that wrecks Stark’s mansion, before they both fire repulsor blasts at each other, starting a massive explosion that downs both of them, before Rhodey leaves with the suit. And now, once Rhodey takes one of Iron Man’s suits because he’s being irresponsible, the US just decides they don’t care how many other suits Stark still has in his possession? Also, after knowing Stark for years and seeing how irresponsible he was before becoming Iron Man and then seeing him change in the previous film, Rhodey sees him throwing one party in the Iron Man suit and getting drunk and decides to turn on his best friend and steal his suit? This seems like a slight over-reaction to me.
To make matters even worse, in the very next scene, Fury and Natasha show up to question Stark, and Fury raises the perfectly legitimate question as to how Rhodey took the armor, to which Natasha says that supposedly Stark has fail-safes to prevent unauthorized access to his armor. However, the movie decides to just not answer the question, meaning this sequence makes even less sense. Maybe they were indicating that Stark wanted Rhodey to have his armor, but that still doesn’t explain why any of this happened? Was Tony trying to provoke his friend into fighting him so that he would steal the suit? Was that some type of test? If so, there’s no indication elsewhere in the movie that this is the case, and it seems pretty inconsistent with Iron Man’s character in the rest of the movie.
Fury does reveal to Stark that there may be a way for him to save his life and create a new ARC reactor that won’t kill him, pointing him to his father’s research and confining him to his mansion with the aid of Agent Phil Coulson. This, surprisingly, is one of the better parts of the movie. Seeing Tony come to terms with his troubled relationship with his father is really interesting. He finds a video his father recorded to demonstrate a model of a futuristic city he’d created, in which a young Tony Stark walked in and disrupted the process only to be scolded, showing how Tony formed his view of his father as being cold and distant. However, what he didn’t see as a child was that, after this incident, Howard Stark recorded a message for his son, saying that Tony was his best creation. It’s a nice way of showing how Tony’s perspective is changing, and his search through his father’s notes becomes almost like a bonding experience for him. This leads to him discovering that the model city that he’d tampered with as a child was, in fact, a 3D map for a new element his father discovered, one that can cure Tony’s predicament.
Admittedly, it does feel like a bit of a convenience that, decades ago, Howard Stark discovered an element that would save Tony’s life but decided to keep it hidden because he didn’t think the world he lived in was responsible enough to use it in the right way. That kind of undermines this sequence, and it’s also slightly frustrating to see this long sequence in which there’s no action or seemingly any progress on what I guess is supposed to be the main plot. The sequence is still mostly good, but I think the movie needed something a bit more fast-paced to keep things interesting. That being said, the fact that the arc of Tony Stark dying actually gets a real resolution automatically makes it the most interesting one in the film. However, the fact that it resolves with still half an hour left in the movie really makes it feel like the various plot threads in this movie have nothing to do with each other.
So, Tony Stark does have a decent character arc in this movie, with him facing his own mortality and trying to reconcile his perception of his father with reality. It doesn’t really tie into the main plot surrounding Whiplash (or the other side-plot, involving the US government) or even build off of his arc from the previous film, which is frustrating and makes it feel hollower, but it is nice to see that they at least did something with Tony Stark’s character.
The handling of the super-heroes is one of the movie’s stronger points (not that that’s saying very much). This is the first movie where Samuel L. Jackson gets a substantial role as Nick Fury and he does a great job. Fun fact, when the Ultimate version of Nick Fury was created in the comic books (in the early 2000’s), the character was actually written with Samuel L. Jackson in mind. Don Cheedle, after replacing Terrence Howard as best friend Rhodey, gets to suit up as War Machine. While him getting the suit doesn’t make any sense, the design for it is pretty solid. Additionally, while the scene itself is pretty weak, it is still entertaining seeing him and Iron Man team up at the end of the film.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention Scarlett Johansen’s first appearance as Natasha Romanov aka Black Widow. While she doesn’t have the depth that she would later, Johansen still does a really good job and she plays a memorable role in the film in the action scene where she fights her way through Hammer Security. While someone could argue that this feels almost like a commercial for Black Widow’s involvement in future MCU projects, it’s worth pointing out that Black Widow is a major character in the Iron Man comics, so she’s not someone who’s just included randomly. Secondly, she doesn’t take up much screen time from the other plotlines. She’s just shown working in Stark Industries to keep an eye on Stark, speaks to Stark with Fury and then gets in on the action in the third act. Given how badly the movie needed some action, and this does add another layer to the final confrontation, I’d argue that this is a good inclusion, even setting aside the setup it provides for future movies.
At this point, however, I do need to backtrack a little bit. I’ve been focusing entirely on Tony Stark and the other heroes ever since the battle with Whiplash on the race track. During that time, Justin Hammer staged a breakout of Anton Vanko, which included faking his death, before enlisting his help.
Having seen Stark spiraling out of control, Hammer sees his chance to strike and finally surpass his rival, but he needs Vanko’s help. As an incompetent businessman with sub-par engineers working for him, Hammer asks Vanko to help him develop Iron Man style suits to sell to the US government so that he can take Stark’s place. While Vanko wants more direct payback against Iron Man, he agrees to Hammer’s plan, and begins stringing him along while he sets up his own master plan.
Instead of building an army of Iron Man suits, Vanko creates dozens of armored drones. While Hammer is upset, he goes along with this change, not realizing that Vanko is building drones so that he, not Hammer, can control them. With a better lineup of villains, this plot could’ve been a lot more interesting. With Hammer being so incompetent, I get how Whiplash is able to manipulate him so easily, but it would’ve been more fun to see some back and forth between the two. Having two villains working together, but also having their own secret agenda that they’re manipulating the other one for sounds really interesting (a lot of Super-villain team-ups end up just being straightforward plots to kill the hero such as Batman Forever or Spider-Man 3), but it doesn’t really work when Whiplash is the only one actually accomplishing anything or fooling anyone.
Also, Whiplash, just on his own, is not a good villain. From behind-the-scenes information, we know that Whiplash’s role was dramatically reduced and Mickey Rourke was angry about it, likely harming his performance (I’ve only ever seen Rourke in this film and the Expendables so I can’t make any kind of informed comment as to the quality of his acting). Little reference is made to his father’s past with Howard Stark, and we never get to see anything of Whiplash’s personality or backstory outside of this. Even in regards to his father, this just serves as a reason for him to want to kill Iron Man; it doesn’t come up anymore throughout the movie or seem to influence his actions and choices outside of the setup.
Eventually, however, the heroes’ plotline and the villain’s plotline do reconnect as Justin Hammer is hired to outfit the Iron Man suit that Rhodey took with a new array of weapons. This actually serves as one of the funniest scenes in the movie (at least in my opinion) as Hammer continues to pitch one weapon after the next to the stone-faced Rhodey, all the while growing increasingly desperate, trying to find something to pique his interest with. I personally find Sam Rockwell pretty entertaining in this movie (certainly a better antagonist than Whiplash), but I feel like even the people who hate Hammer will chuckle at this scene.
While Tony Stark finishes creating the new element to serve as a replacement for the palatium in his ARC reactor, Hammer finds out Vanko is plotting against him and decides to have his henchmen keep watch on him while he heads to the Hammer expo, getting ready to show off his drones (as well as the War Machine suit). However, Vanko kills his guards, calls Stark, and tells him that he’s working with Hammer and is planning to attack the Expo.
Finally, we get to see Tony Stark suit up as Iron Man as the movie instantly becomes more engaging as soon as he puts the suit on. While I can’t say the third act is good, it is at least exciting. The rest of the movie has been pretty boring, but the third act does pick up some of the slack in the action department.
Vanko hacks into the Hammer drones and into the War Machine suit, directing them to kill Iron Man when he arrives at the Expo. This leads into a chase sequence through the city, as Iron Man stalls for time while Black Widow tries to disable Vanko’s hack and free War Machine from his control (leading into the Black Widow action scene I mentioned earlier). Tony’s fight with War Machine is actually one of the better action scenes in the film; the chase sequence is fast-paced with some good visuals, and when War Machine finally manages to catch up with Iron Man and fight him on the ground, we get the best one-on-one fight of the movie. It doesn’t last more than thirty seconds, but there’s some tension to it, as Iron Man seems to be in real danger, and there’s an extra layer to the duel because Iron Man can’t just cut loose against War Machine; he has to make sure he doesn’t hurt his best friend. It’s the only bit of Iron Man action in the film that stands out as being an essential action scene for an Iron Man movie series, I just wish they’d taken the time to actually develop it more.
And then, we finally get to see Iron Man and War Machine team up. That, in and of itself, is something I (and presumably other Marvel fans) wanted to see, but the execution is actually kind of underwhelming.
Their battle with the horde of Hammer drones looks good, but there’s a lack of tension to it. The drones don’t seem to pose any real threat to the heroes, so it’s just kind of a mindless sequence of things blowing up around the heroes. And, with their banter about what weapons they’re using, it starts to feel more like they’re playing a really easy online video game and seeing who can get the higher score. Again, the visuals are really strong, but the battle just isn’t that interesting. After this, Whiplash arrives in a massive battle suit of his own. Given that I consider him one of the worst villains in an MCU film, I have absolutely no investment in his conflict with Stark, and this battle does nothing to elevate his motivations, his story arc, or even give us good action.
The battle is short-lived, as he tosses Iron Man and Rhodey around the park for about a minute in a thoroughly uninteresting battle. Then, with both heroes pinned, Whiplash, for no discernible reason, decides to take his helmet off, giving the two heroes a clear shot at his head. Instead, they decide to aim their repulsors at each other, firing them at the same instant to create a massive shockwave, just like the one that ended their battle earlier in the film.
Even setting aside the fact that this is a lazy use of the cliché where a seemingly unrelated event at the beginning of the film comes back to let the heroes defeat the super-villain (a tactic used by the Fantastic Four films, but not other movies in the MCU), it makes no sense. Whiplash leaves himself open for an easy killing blow, the heroes unnecessarily complicate things by creating this massive explosion instead of just shooting him, and Whiplash just stands there and watches as the repulsor beams hit and begin to pool together into one massive explosion. He doesn’t leap out of the way, try to shield himself in anyway, or even lower his helmet so that his face isn’t destroyed by the blast. Had he done any of those things, he could’ve easily defeated the heroes and the movie would be over. No other MCU film has ever defeated its villain in this lazy or flimsy of a way.
However, the movie wraps itself up in a few short scenes (thankfully, this isn’t one of the two and a half hour films in the MCU but keeps its runtime at a modest two hours). Rhodey keeps the War Machine suit as Pepper and Tony continue their on again/off again romance with another grating argument on a rooftop, and then Stark meets with Fury. Fury tells him his personality keeps him from being an effective team player and says that he wants Iron Man on the Avengers, but not Tony Stark. Which would be really easy for him, considering there’s another guy with an Iron Man suit running around, but he decides to instead leave Stark/Iron Man as a potential consultant, but not a full-fledged Avenger.
Tony does get one thing from Fury, however. Knowing that he’s going to get awarded with the congressional medal of honor, he requests that Senator Stern (head of the committee who had tried to take the Iron Man armor from Stark) be the one to present him with the medals. This provides for one of the film’s more amusing jokes, and the movie comes to an end.
Now that I’ve completed going scene by scene, this seems to be as good a time as any to bring up what is, at least to me, one of the weirdest and most interesting aspects of this movie. At the halfway point, most of the supporting cast is accusing Tony of not using the Iron Man armor responsibly, and he’s spent half the movie warning people what would happen if the technology got into the wrong hands, it would seem that we would have been getting into the movie’s theme. Now, for all I know, that might have been the intent and it just wasn’t executed very well, because none of these concerns are ever resolved or even brought up again during the end of the movie, which led me to craft my own interpretation.
I might be reading too much into things, but this part of the story almost comes off as satire to me, and if so, it would explain the painfully slow and boring first two acts of the movie. Keep in mind, this is just my interpretation (and to be honest I’m not one hundred percent sure I’m right), but it feels like the writers are trying to point out to the fans that Iron Man’s story is supposed to have more depth to it, that it’s really about Tony Stark, not Iron Man, and that these ideas are being explored as a means of giving a satire on the moviegoing public’s desire to see more Iron Man suits and action. I don’t know if this is intended as satire or not, but I am convinced that the writers were opposed to making the sequel focus more on the action and armor, but took this to an extreme that made the first hour and a half of this movie genuinely boring, as the storylines weren’t interesting and didn’t make any sense.
And then, the end of the movie completely backtracks on this idea, as it becomes a loud, messy action sequence involving Iron Man and War Machine fighting Whiplash and his army of drones. If there was no satire intended, this could be seen as the payoff to the first two acts (which would leave all the ideas that the first two acts incredibly pointless), but either way, it doesn’t feel like there’s much consistency to the movie, because the ending feels completely jarring from the rest of the film. Ironically, the movie even seems to admit that it’s been painfully boring, as the crowd at the Hammer expo erupts into cheers when Tony Stark finally arrives in the Iron Man armor, the first time we’ve seen it in over half an hour (again, after it’s barely been used in the first two acts). So, my main point is, the movie is extremely inconsistent on what its style is supposed to be, what its core themes are, or just really any basic idea of what the movie is about.
And that’s really why this movie fails in my eyes; it isn’t about anything. It’s just a movie that existed so they could put the title ‘Iron Man 2’ on something while they setup the Avengers, without actually going through the trouble of creating an interesting plot, or even any kind of a story at all.
It genuinely pains me to write a review so negative for a Marvel movie, and I honestly didn’t expect to be quite this negative when I started but the more I thought about the movie, the worse it got. It’s not a terrible film, largely because there isn’t anything in it that’s aggressively bad; most of the flaws come in when you start to analyze the movie. Unfortunately, there also isn’t much good about the movie, aside from introducing Natasha and expanding Fury’s and Rhodey’s roles, so there’s not much to distract you from all the problems of the film. Thankfully, however, Tony Stark’s character would be handled excellently in most of his future appearances, making up for the fact that his second and third solo films were such a disappointment in comparison with his first.
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