 |
| Image Courtesy en.wikipedia.org |
Like I said in last week’s “Retro-Review”
regarding The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 is also considered to
be one of the three worst MCU movies.
That assessment is indeed valid, but I do not think that it tells the
whole story. Without going into all the
numbers I included last week, Iron Man 2 has a Rotten Tomatoes score of
72%, with an audience rating that is also 72%.
This is the third-lowest of all the MCU movies to-date (ahead of The
Incredible Hulk and Thor: The Dark World). However, even though that isn’t a great
rating, it’s still considered “Fresh.”
It’s in the same range as The Wolverine (70%), The Amazing
Spider-Man (73%), and Michael Keaton’s Batman (72%). And you can look at all the movies with lower
ratings that I mentioned last week.
So even when Marvel makes a bad
movie, it’s really not that bad!
Side Note: I realize that there’s a lot of variance when
it comes to Rotten Tomatoes ratings. The
two reasons that I use Rotten Tomatoes for this are because they compile a ton
of different reviews for their ratings and because it’s a quick and easy way to
compare how different movies were received.
 |
| Image Courtesy www.pelicula-trailer.com |
Iron Man 2 is the primary jumping-off point
for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This
is when things really start moving as the universe expands, both deeper and
broader. It seems like every cinematic
universe needs one of these movies—one which exists more to connect the other
movies together than for itself—and it seems like these movies rarely
succeed. Take the collapse of The
Amazing Spider-Man franchise after The Amazing Spider-Man 2: they tried to plant seeds for a half-dozen
spinoffs, and all the seeds washed away.
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is another example: it attempted to set up two Justice League
movies, as well as spinoffs for Wonder Woman, Batman, Aquaman,
Cyborg, and The Flash, but got so bogged down with
universe-building that it never really got its own plot right.
Iron Man 2 is certainly not a perfect
movie—as I said above it’s not even a “good” movie by MCU standards—but you
have to admit that it succeeds in what it is trying to do. And by comparison with other
“universe-building movies,” Iron Man 2 does a very good job of getting
its own plot across.
The movie’s plot offers quite a
few opportunities for the universe-building to fit in. It borrows from and adapts two comic book arcs,
though neither looks quite the same in movie form. The first is the “Demon in a Bottle” arc, in
which Tony Stark struggled with his alcoholism.
However, the movie’s version of this places the focus instead on Tony
suffering from palladium poisoning due to the ARC reactor in his chest—a
condition which is accelerated by his use of the Iron Man armor. Because he is dying, Tony engages in various
self-destructive behaviors such as binge-drinking, drunken fighting-while-wearing-his-armor,
and even driving in the Monaco Grand Prix.
However, most of his self-destructive behavior stops once Nick Fury
brings him a goodie box from his father which includes the key to finding a
viable replacement element for palladium.
Once Tony is no longer dying, his alcoholism and death wish either
disappear or are greatly diminished.
 |
| Image Courtesy www.actu-film.com |
The second comic arc is “Armor
Wars,” which in the comics saw several nations attempting to duplicate the Iron
Man armor, some of them by stealing elements of Tony’s technology to
reverse-engineer it. This actually plays
a major role in the movie, but again it is not quite the same as in the
comics. Though other nations are
attempting to create their own versions of the Iron Man armor, all the tests
revealed are catastrophic failures, leading Tony to conclude that most
countries are 5-10 years away from a working prototype. This all changes, however, when Ivan Vanko
builds his own miniaturized ARC reactor using the same blueprints as Tony, and
then uses his reactor to power the first Whiplash suit. This kicks off a major arms race on the part
of Justin Hammer to turn Vanko’s knowledge into a viable weaponized suit of
armor. Instead of suits, Vanko builds
drones, though he also builds his own “Whiplash Mark 2” armor. In addition, the military and government make
repeated attempts to seize the Iron Man armor to use it for military
purposes. This finally succeeds when
Rhodey takes the Mark 2 armor and flies away with it. Hammer weaponizes the suit, creating the
first War Machine armor. This arc comes
to a head at the Stark Expo when Tony must fight both the Hammer drones and a
hacked War Machine, all of whom are being controlled by Vanko. After this, Iron Man and War Machine must
team up to defeat Vanko himself.
The plot of the movie is definitely
complete, and it does take a primary role throughout the movie. All of the main characters receive a
satisfying arc. There is no time in the
movie that it is not about Tony self-destructing because he is dying or about
his efforts to keep his inventions out of the hands of those who would misuse
them.
 |
| Image Courtesy www.filmkinotrailer.com |
Having said that, this movie is
certainly not without its flaws. There
are a lot of elements which are primarily included for universe-building and
only tangentially related to the plot at hand.
Most of the universe-building is directed towards The Avengers: Nick Fury and Phil Coulson appear, Tony talks
about Fury’s “Super-Secret Boy Band” a couple times, and at the end of the
movie they even show a map which indicates locations of potential Avengers (New
Mexico, Wakanda, the Atlantic, etc.).
Even the inclusion of Scarlett Johansson’s Natalie Rushman, a.k.a.
Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. Black Widow, is a way of planting seeds for The
Avengers. Natasha gets a very good
introduction in this movie, but she really doesn’t receive much of an arc. Of course, her role in this movie is less
about character development and more about character introduction: she’s a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, master of
undercover work, and kickass close-quarters fighter.
 |
| Image Courtesy www.hollywoodnews.com |
There are also a couple of teases
directed towards Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger,
starting with Coulson leaving for New Mexico about 2/3 of the way through the
movie. When Tony is trying to figure out
the new element there is a diagram of the Tesseract, something which becomes
extremely important in Captain America and then The Avengers. These elements really do not distract from
the plot of the movie because they are far enough in the background that they
can’t overshadow the Iron Man-related stuff.
Robert Downey Jr. of course does
an excellent job as Tony Stark—partly because the “Demon in a Bottle” elements
probably hit very close to home for him as a recovering drug addict! He makes Tony’s struggle and self-destruction
very real and believable. He also has
very good rapport with Don Cheadle as James “Rhodey” Rhodes—better than
Terrence Howard in the first one! Rhodey
makes a good “straight man” to Tony’s comedy.
One of my biggest hang-ups with
all of the Iron Man movies (actually any movie with Tony Stark) is with
the Heads’ Up Display (H.U.D.) acting, which is very hit-or-miss. These are some of the most difficult
sequences to film, as they must be done after the fact with very little input
from what’s happening in the scene.
Additionally, all of the acting must take place through facial
expressions. That being said, a lot of
times it is spot-on, but there are a small number of places where the H.U.D.
expressions are either lacking or wrong.
Several places in all the movies show a facial expression which can best
be described as “Iron Man pooping.”
Cheadle doesn’t do as well in this area as Downey—in several places he
doesn’t have any expression at all.
 |
| Image Courtesy www.actu-film.com |
Even with those acting hang-ups,
I really enjoyed all of the action sequences in this movie. The fight scene in Monaco is surprisingly
innovative with its use of the briefcase suit and Happy running into Vanko with
the car. Iron Man and War Machine
fighting the drones is also a really fun fight.
It’s basically mindless violence, but it’s the kind of mindless violence
that we like seeing in Iron Man movies.
The final fight sequence with Whiplash is also fun because we see more
of Iron Man and War Machine’s teamwork, but there were only two elements in it
that stand out: The “Ex-Wife” turning
out to be a dud and the “Sidekick” moment with Iron Man and War Machine.
Long story short, Iron Man 2
is certainly not the best MCU movie ever, but in my opinion it is a cohesive
movie with a lot of fun elements. The
universe-building elements are almost overwhelming, but they still
connect with the movie’s plot in logical ways.
What do you think of Iron Man 2? Which do you think is the worst MCU
movie? Let me know in the comments!
No comments:
Post a Comment