Iron Man 2 Opening Day Review
Fri, May 7, 2010 
So, I wasn’t privy to the early screening of Iron Man 2, like I had hoped. I waited until 5.07 just like most of you. It was a day I was especially looking forward to, because, as a rarity, I got to spend time with my dad, while watching it. The bad part was, as we were walking out, we both said, “I wish Robin Hood had come out this week”.
For the play by play version of the review, you can check out by buddy Mitch’s review HERE. I’m just going to give you an overall description.
Right from the beginning I got this stressed sense of urgency, which just set a bad, crowded pace from the word go. Or maybe, instead of go, it was the ridiculous scream Rourke’s character lets out when his father dies.. It leads right into Ivan Vanko using his father’s blue prints of the arc reactor to build the weaponized vest he later uses as Whiplash and drills home the fact that Vanko hates Stark Enterprises and blames Tony personally for what happened to his father. You find out later that he had been partners with Howard Stark in creating the arc reactor, but was forced out by Stark due to his greed. So, bad opening scene.
Then, well, more bad. Tony does the big entrance to the Stark Expo that we’ve all scene 100 times over in the previews. I’m going to use the word hate here in reference to how I felt about it. Tony Stark, our supposed hero, is, for lack of a better word, pimping the Iron Man suit as a gimmick. I didn’t like the fact that he told the world he was Iron Man in the first movie, so you can imagine how I felt about him parading around to dancing girls and laser shows. Actually, I didn’t mind the dancing girls.
It was definitely a sequel. And I mean that in the sense that they took the best parts of the original and beat them to death. Everyone loves the smartass, sharp tongued, better than thou Tony right? Can’t get enough of it? Wrong. You can only lay witness to so much bragging and showboating before you come to realize that our main character is a douche. Maybe that’s what they were going for. To show a character flaw. It came off as annoying, though.
And if the good guy’s being portrayed as a shithead, you have to out do his douchiness with the likes of Sam Rockwell’s Justin Hammer. Think of Jim Carrey playing Edward Nigma in Batman Forever. Hammer shares that same jealous rage for Tony Stark that The Riddler did for Bruce Wayne. Only, instead of completely overacting the part like Carrey, Rockwell decided to try to rip off Owen Wilson’s shtick with the whiney, comedic voice. It didn’t work, by the way.
Keeping with the upping the ante theme of sequels, the holographic schematics in Tony’s workshop were over done. When he had his all too easy epiphany after looking at an old model of the Stark Expo, Tony decides that a globe looks like an atom and goes to work on creating a new element. There was a cool little easter egg here with an all too familiar shield, which, although half destroyed from an obvious battle, still displayed the star emblem in the center. I guess my problem with it was just how easily all of his problems were solved. Even the end scene with Vanko was a little anti-climatic.
The story really wasn’t bad. There was a decent plot. It was just the fill material that dragged it down. That, and, even though there wasn’t really THAT much going on, the way the scenes were cut into short segments made it feel like they were trying to cram too much in. Although it wasn’t anywhere in the same vicinity as being as bad, I kinda’ got that Speed Racer feeling. I know. That’s harsh. I understand the studio rolling this out for the income, but, with what they're wanting to accomplish with The Avengers, I don't think any of the character movies should have been given a sequel beforehand.
Maybe I’m being a little hard on it, because I was looking forward to it so much. And I’m sure there are going to be plenty of you that disagree and love it. But, at the end of the day, I was left wanting more. Just not more Iron Man.
Reader Comments (15)
Loved the review Mike. I was looking forward to your take.
I think we can all agree, we didn't get the epic movie they led us on to believe we were getting. The trailers and the hype was extremely misleading.
Great review Mike.
I went to the midnight show last night, and I couldn't agree more with you. I'm actually kinda glad we won't get any more RDJ and Favreau Iron Man once Avengers has passed.
I thought it would have been a lot better then what it was, I'm dissapointed in what we ended up with.
Oh and very cool review, you were dead on.
I just realized I'm not the only Dave posting on here lol
liked the review Mike, very cool, but I think this was a huge step up from the first one.
it sounds like you went into this wanting to hate it...
I had low expectations, but came out very happy with the end result
See, I actually liked the first one. To me, it had a much better blend of action and comedy. Even with the committee hearing, where he was calling out Justin Hammer, it was just pressed too far. And the drunk dancing...dude...
No. It was the opposite, BatmanFan. I wanted to love this. I had already written the review in my head telling everyone to drop their weekend plans to go see it. I just couldn't do that after watching it.
I get what Mikes saying, I went in wanting to love this too. The only difference is, I actually thought it was a fun movie overall
Good to the point review Mike. I'm glad to see some differing opinions on this. From the trailers you knew the action was going to be amped up ten times more than it was in the original. I enjoy RDJ eccentric Tony Stark but I have to agree that they went a tad bit overboard in this one. I hate to be a comic book nerd and say he doesn't resemble the character in the comics so much, but I think he needed at least a few more serious Tony Stark moments and we barely get even two in this one. I went in with excitement but not over expecting anything more than a good high end action movie. I came out very pleased and enjoyed my time watching the movie, but as you said it doesn't have that great balance of wit, and emotion that the first Iron Man had.
And I loved it...I saw it last night at the IMAX and we just thought it was great. I'm not terribly familiar with the IM comics, so I couldn't judge it from that perspective. But I'd heard some mixed reviews going in but I left not really understanding where they were coming from. I thought the performances were just all-around good and RDJ was funny as hell.
I agree with this so much! The movie is the worst kind of bad, it's not. It just doesn't work so you can't hate it or make fun of it, but it's not good enough to watch ever again unless it's on cable.
wow you were really hard on this. I thought it was awesome, but I wasn't expecting too much either
nice review Mike. You make some good points. I agree with you for the most part, but I actually thought it was pretty damn cool overall.
this movie was slapped together to fast, they were already counting our money.
Best movie I ever saw by myself :)