Unbored

Well, I’m back from the premiere of Iron Man 2. The first was a big surprise for the superhero genre because it was incredibly well written, extremely funny and had unbelievable talent like Jeff bridges and Robert Downey Jr. ad-libbing some of the best lines into existence… And they were writing the script on the set while they were shooting.

This time… Well…

The film starts in Russia, where a guy dies and he turns out to have worked with Tony Stark’s dad on the original Macguffin the titular armour runs on, that guy’s son, played by Mickey Rourke, roars in manliness and swears revenge. Also, since the events of the first movie, Tony Stark has found that his fancy glowy pacemaker is slowly killing him by drawing little circuit patterns on his chest in Biro. Tony finds himself torn apart by not only the new threat of the Russian guy who’s built lightsabre whips, but his own destructive behaviour.

That last part was one of my favourite parts of this movie. And we all know that was the second reason they chose Robert Downey Jr for the part, the first being that he’s really damn good. Tony looks like he’s in genuine pain and you can almost feel for him as he alienates his friends and drinks himself into a stupor. Leading to my favourite scene of the film where Tony celebrates his birthday absolutely tanked and wearing the armour on the dance floor at the party.

This film is also a record breaker in that I think it’s the first superhero film I have ever seen where the protagonist literally soils himself.

Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell are good as villains despite the fact that they seem to be what would happen if you divided Jeff Bridges into two characters. Samuel L. Jackson is great in the five or so seconds he’s in there, and Scarlett Johansson could have been cut from this movie altogether if it weren’t for Disney and Marvel’s desire to cram as much stuff into these movies as humanly possible. Her one fight scene consists of a minute of bad wirework and two poses that went into the trailer. Maybe she would have been good if there’s been some actual story for her to act in.

There are a few good funny moments to this movie, such as Tony finding a brilliant use for a certain character’s signature weapon and the whole trial scene. But nothing anywhere near as good as in the first movie, in fact, several of the best lines in the trailers Don’t even show up!

This movie felt like it was spread too thin, and admittedly it had far too much to live up to. The main characters don’t get enough time to develop, fights are too hectic to even see what’s happening, and there were so many references to Marvel continuity that it stopped being fun and started getting in the way of the movie. The only reason Jackson and Johansson are in this movie is because the nerds want Nick Fury and Black Widow… And instead of a simple battle of good and evil we get a tesseract of mixed messages, mediocre one liners and pointless argument.

Half of the fluff is a result of Disney’s ambitious project of making a movie for each of the Avengers before making an Avengers movie, they will end up spending millions on movies that include characters like Thor, who nobody’s even heard of, but have to be there to fill the quota. When we all know the only Avengers movie we want to watch would be one with a young Dame Diana Rigg!

I went to see the first Iron Man movie three times in the cinemas. I wouldn’t consider doing the same for this movie. It’s not bad. It’s just nowhere near as good as the first.