Was Iron Man 2 A Huge Success?
If more of a good thing is always better, Iron Man 2 is a huge success.
Villains? Twice as many as in the first movie. Two and a half, if you count Garry Shandling’s vile bureaucratic caricature of a senator.
Potential love interests for Robert Downey, Jr.’s charmingly egomaniacal billionaire genius Tony Stark? Double the fun there, as well. Scarlett Johansson’s Natalie Rushman is added to the mix as Stark’s new assistant when he promotes the long-suffering Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) to CEO of Stark Industries. The sexual chemistry the trailers play up for Downey and Johansson is pretty fleeting, but in Johansson, the filmmakers perform much the same trick as the Wachowskis did with Keanu Reeves in The Matrix: they take an actor of limited emotional range and turn wooden acting into badass stoicism.
Director Jon Favreau and screenwriter Justin Theroux up the ante on the action as well. Explosions? At least an order of magnitude more. There’s also an extra Iron Man thrown into the mix once Rhodey (Don Cheadle, an introspective improvement to the character over Terrence Howard) suits up.
And then there’s the army of robots. Did I mention that a lot of things blow up? Best of all, Samuel L. Jackson gets an upgrade from a post-credit cameo to full supporting player, and more Sam Jackson is almost always welcome.
Is all that too much of a whole lot of good things? Sometimes, yes. In the quest to do things bigger, louder, and faster than its predecessor, Iron Man 2′s excess can get a little… excessive. But this is still miles ahead of the average summer festival of fireballs, owing in large part to the great ensemble and the snappy dialogue Theroux gives them to deliver. Favreau continues to impress, a rare action director who places an emphasis on performance over effects.
Not that the thrills get short shrift. Just as important to its success, his battle sequences buck the current Michael Bay-approved vogue for quick cutting action so frenetic that you forget which blur is the good guy and which is the bad guy. Make no mistake, this is still a frivolous summer thrill ride, but with whipsmart writing and a real visual elegance.
Downey once again shines as Stark, for once a superhero completely untortured about being a hero. In the six months that passes between the end of the first film and the start of this one, he’s single-handedly rid the world of war. Is there a better justification for a little well-deserved egotism and self-congratulation? Of course, a guy with everything going his way is boring, so Favreau and Theroux throw a litany of conflict his way.
Congress wants him to turn over the suit (and if congressional hearings were usually as entertaining as Stark’s, C-SPAN would have ratings on par with the major networks). Defense contractor Justin Hammer, unable to replicate the technology, will do anything to steal it to advance his contract. Sam Rockwell plays Hammer with the perfect blend of conniving and bumbling — for a moment you wonder how anyone this inept in so many areas could become a billionaire doing defense contracting, until you realize you’ve just answered your own question.
Reaching for yet more slings and arrows, the filmmakers toss in some health problems, related to the device in Stark’s chest that’s supposed to be keeping him alive; daddy issues that would make even Spielberg proud; and even a few eccentricities worthy of Howard Hughes. But mental conflict, health problems, and bureaucracy don’t make an action movie, so the real big bad comes in the form of Ivan Vanko, a hulking, prison tattooed physicist with a score to settle with Stark. Just about any lunkhead with muscles could have been thrown into this role, but in Mickey Rourke they land an actor who gives the character — who barely speaks, and when he does, barely speaks English — some real depth, and a casual, mischievous sparkle in the eyes.
The plot becomes unnecessarily cluttered with all these forces aligning themselves against Stark, but never so much that it becomes confusing. There is a surprising amount of chatter for an action movie, and what that does do is give these actors a chance to have some fun with their characters, something often lacking in super-hero flicks.
With that goal in mind, Downey spends a lot of the movie out of costume, and when you’ve got an actor like him in the lead, that’s just what you want. Putting him behind the anonymous iron mask too much of the time would just be a waste, so Favreau and Theroux are judicious with Iron Man‘s screentime. But when they do suit him up, they go all out.
Occasionally, some sequences stretch the limits of our suspension of disbelief, even for a movie like this. There’s one unfortunate trick in particular that the suit performs on the grand prix track at Monte Carlo that belongs in trash like Transformers. The convenient out that the gimmick provides from a tough situation leaves a bad taste, but luckily, it’s the exception, not the rule. Overall, this is a smart piece of summer escapism; its greatest fault is that it can be a little too eager to please, sometimes giving us too much of what it figures we want.
Tags: fantasy, fox, Iron Man 2, movie, Movies, Robert Downey
