Iron Man 2 (Movie Review)
Iron Man 2
When it comes to superhero movies, the popular trend seems to be to turn the protagonist into a brooding and introspective paradigm of justice while giving consideration to the fun of set piece action almost as an afterthought. X-Men portrays a discriminatory allegory, Spider-Man deals with the juggling act of power and responsibility, and Batman has ceased to have any fun whatsoever ever since Alfred turned into his mouthpiece for well timed pop-philosophized moralizing. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with any of this, I used to lament the abandonment of high octane glee in favour of introspection. That was, of course, until Iron Man came along and decided to feature an unprecedented badass in the lead role. While Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) did indeed have his fair share of depth, growth, and resolve by the end of his rollicking two hour introduction, Iron Man never stopped being about the joy and thrill of having the world’s foremost engineering genius and playboy save the world for no other reason than because it would be awesome.
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Now we have Iron Man 2, which picks up six months after the events of the first film left off with the world free from catastrophe. After pacifying the Middle East and playing the planet’s iron encased vigilante protector for a while, certain politicians in the US government begin to take issue with having such remarkable weapons technology in the hands of a single affluent man. Such fears then prove to be well founded as the device keeping Tony Stark alive is slowly but surely poisoning him, causing his behaviour to become more and more erratic and unpredictable. Further exacerbating matters is a rival weapons conglomerate headed by Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) as he attempts to replicate Stark’s technology and render his brand obsolete. With thoughts of either his seemingly irrevocable death or his bleak future of obsolescence looming overhead, Stark begins to lose control of his life and self-destruct.
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While Justin Hammer is, for all intents and purposes, Tony Stark’s chief adversary, he isn’t positioned as the film’s big bad. Hammer is merely a sleazy corporate type, better suited to orchestrating diabolical schemes than executing them himself. Sinister though his intentions may be, there simply isn’t anything menacing or threatening in his feeble frame that would make him worthy of being a villain in the traditional sense. Instead, that responsibility belongs to Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), a brawny Russian scientist enraged over Tony Stark’s rise to prominence. Ivan inherited blueprints of Stark’s Arc Reactor technology from his father, and it’s with these plans that he fashions his own twist on the Iron Man suit and sets out to destroy Tony Stark. In order to focus the ploys of the antagonists, the film has Hammer enlist Vanko’s help immediately after recognizing the common desire to see Stark removed, and thus the cluttered mess that is multiple villains carrying out their designs in separate ways is tactfully avoided.
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To level the playing field somewhat, the cast of Stark’s support characters is expanded beyond stalwarts Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and James Rhodes (Don Cheadle, having replaced Terrence Howard from the first film). The SHIELD agency returns playing a more integral part in the proceedings this time around, and Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) along with it. New allies also include Stark’s new personal assistant Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) and SHIELD director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), a man whose only purpose is to peddle that upcoming Avengers movie while looking like a cross between John Shaft and a pirate. And of course there’s War Machine, a modified and improved version of Stark’s outfit piloted by James Rhodes just in case you wondered whether or not it was possible for a hot rod coloured rocket suit to be any less subtle.
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As stellar as the casting may be, it’s often all too easy for such large ensembles of characters to become misdirected and misguided. Three years ago, Spider-Man 3’s jumbled presentation and narrative offered a compelling reason to avoid involving too many players in the same production, and while there are certainly hints that a similar fate may have been in the cards for Iron Man 2, such a disaster was mostly avoided by having clearly defined villains. What Hammer may lack in sophistication is more than made up for in charm and charisma as his almost infantile saunter and diction indicates. Vanko, on the other hand, is a wholly fascinating character, deftly portrayed and presented with an intriguing history while never succumbing to a crisis of conscience that could all too easily mire and ruin the film’s pacing. Both characters have clear and intelligible motivations that allow them to be compelling without being particularly deep, which is a fairly remarkable achievement.
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Since the villains are largely left to their own devices off-screen for the first two acts, the core trio of protagonists (Stark, Potts, and Rhodes) are afforded plenty of breathing room which both lets the actors flex their thespian muscels and gives their characters a chance to develop. During these sequences where there’s no real impending threat beyond Tony’s health and political demands, the focus of Iron Man 2 becomes about exploring the relationship between Stark and Potts without ever actually defining it, as well as probing the strained friendship of Stark and Rhodes. For the average superhero film, the change of emphasis from action to drama for too prolonged of a period might normally be interpreted as a betrayal, and indeed there is only a pair of set-pieces before the action packed climax.
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Yet much like Tony Stark himself, Iron Man 2 is so charismatic, so audacious, so charming, and so entertaining, that it still manages to thrive even when there’s nothing going on except for a conversation between two people. For many reasons, this is a strange compliment. Not necessarily because of how the colloquial and fluently delivered dialogue seems to have more in common with an Apatow or Smith comedy than any other superhero film, but more because the overarching narrative still has its fair share of issues. In fact a key plot point of Iron Man 2 rests on a terrible case of plot convenient amnesia as Stark manages to convince the world that his technology is still five to ten years away from all other competitors, despite the fact that the antagonist from the first film was a doppelganger of this allegedly future and currently impossible to reproduce technology.
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There are other wrinkles too, notably the revelation that Iron Man 2 seems to take place within the confines of a week. Now as far as productive and efficient weeks in human history are concerned, this particular seven day span in which numerous imitations of and improvements to the greatest weapon on the planet were made probably causes Iron Man 2’s week to rank quite high on the list (and this doesn’t even bring into consideration the construction by one man of a particle accelerator leading to the synthesis of a new element.) Next to this is Vanko’s curious clairvoyance which allowed him to ambush Stark during his Formula 1 race in Monaco that not even his closest assistants knew about. Also, being the bird person that I am, I would have liked to have known whether Hammer retrieved Vanko’s bird from Russia, or just bought him a new one entirely (no need to dwell too much on this last quibble, mind).
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Not everything about the rest of Iron Man 2 is flawless either as there are a few other minor shortcomings. The sequence in which Tony Stark hits rock bottom by getting wasted as Iron Man during his birthday party isn’t entirely tasteful, and the ensuing brawl between himself and Rhodes during what is depicted as his first spin in the War Machine suit raises a few questions as to just how easy or difficult it is to pilot one of those things. Speaking of Rhodes, while Don Cheadle certainly comes to offer a fine and entertaining portrayal of Stark’s right hand man, it’s hard not to remember that Terrence Howard was there first with a more fitting take on Rhodes as a supportive peer than an occasionally snarky sidekick.
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However what really hinders Iron Man 2 is that there isn’t anything particularly new or innovative about it. The first Iron Man was a breath of fresh air that offered an immensely likable protagonist without ever resorting to overwrought crises of conscience or lamenting diatribes of power and responsibility to drive the proceedings. Iron Man 2 is simply more of the same, and while there’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself, it doesn’t mitigate the feeling that we’ve all been here before. It’s rather peculiar how Iron Man 2 improves upon its predecessor in every area that matters by offering better action, interesting new faces, and more development for the old characters, and yet I still am not able to place it above its forerunner.
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There’s a certain scene in Iron Man where Tony Stark takes his first test drive in his creation after dozens of attempts at hammering out the details. He flies out of his garage, cruises along the coastline, and both reaches for the stars and blows past the traffic of Los Angeles within seconds of each other before heading home, crashing through his roof and collapsing on his grand piano. The spirit of the entire film was encapsulated in this one mesmerizing sequence of triumph, thrill, and experimentation. Iron Man 2 doesn’t have a scene like this. It’s refined, confident, and polished. And while you’d be hard pressed to find a more entertaining and sensational blockbuster at the current moment, I fear that that brilliant trailblazing spirit may have turned into a relic of last year’s model.
Shayla and I are still working on watching the first one. On that note, I’ve read of a certain not-so-spoileriffic scene after the credits roll that basically seems to change the whole landscape of the Iron Man films. Up until that point, the films are very grounded in reality, despite the technology of powered armour suits. It seems like it’s within the realm of possibility, as opposed to pure fantasy superhero films like X-men and Spiderman. All of the sudden, the fact that the (recent) Marvel movies actually share the same universe comes crashing in and says “Nope, just kidding! There’s going to be giant angry green men and Norse gods now!” That seems a little odd to me given the fact that they grounded the two Iron Man films within present day reality. Oh well, Avengers ho!
Yeah, I need to get on this movie series. The first one kind of went under my radar, if only because my initial response was “Who the fuck is Iron Man?” I don’t purport to know my way around much of the comic book genre.