Iron Man 2 - First Review

[OnePimpTiger]

Iron Man 2 -- Film Review

Well, that didn't take long. Everything fun and terrific about "Iron Man," a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel.

In its place, "Iron Man 2" has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts and misguided story lines. A film series that started out with critical and commercial success will have to settle for only the latter with this sequel; Robert Downey Jr.'s return as Tony Stark/Iron Man will assure that.

...

What made the original film so, well, original, was the notion of a superhero as a conflicted individual with enough complexes and mental crises that saving the planet became a sort of stress-relief valve. Now he's borderline psychotic. Not that Downey has any qualms about tackling messed-up bad boys, but the film never makes clear whether he's just being Tony or really cracking up.

The CGI fight scenes quickly become tedious, their outcomes really never in doubt and the mechanics rather clunky. The sight of metal men smashing one another about without drawing any real blood is more reminiscent of the sandbox games of a child with his toys than any movie magic. That actually was true of the first movie as well, but one overlooked it because Tony's prickly personality so dominated the action. Here, Tony has to fight too many over-the-top characters for audience attention. He loses that battle.

Visual and CGI effects are the best and worst thing about "Iron Man 2." The film relies far too much on them. They catch one up in the action, but, unfortunately, nothing else does.

How is "a superhero as a conflicted individual" original? Isn't almost every superhero conflicted? Spider-man, Blade, Wolverine, Rogue, Pyro, etc, etc, etc. And he complains about not being able to tell where Downey, Jr. ends and Tony Stark begins....isn't that the sign of good acting, not being able to differentiate between reality and movie? And, as he himself admits, he didn't have a problem with "the sight of metal men smashing one another about without drawing any real blood" in the first movie, but it's suddenly a serious drawback in 2.

I admit, I'm a big Iron Man fan. I'm a big Robert Downey, Jr. fan. I'm a huge Jon Favreau fan. But I do expect Iron Man 2 to be not as good as the first one...that's just the way sequels go. But this guy's reasoning and rationalizations just don't make sense to me. I get the feeling he just didn't like the movie, for whatever reason (possibly the studio didn't wine and dine him?), and he's having to make up the reasoning behind it for his official review.

[nascards]

I have been very excited about this.
I also am a big Iron Man fan.
The first one is always the best.
Compared to the second one.
That's the way it always is.

[jsox]

I'm a fan of the first movie. I loved it. Great bad-*** superhero movie with a nice modern edge to it.
Heck, he's also one of the best comic-book heroes ever.
I'm definitely seeing this movie on the opening Friday night.