Iron Man 2: Grading, Review, Discussion **SPOILERS**

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

Would explain his love of redheads in a Freudian way.

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

Holy crap, a lot's been said since I logged on last! I'm swimming in a sea of Stark. The "Seven Plots" review was on MSN.com:
http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/iron-man-2/

As to the comment made WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY back on page nine or ten of the thread about front license plates: Utah law requires a license plate at both ends of the car and I have, in fact, been pulled over and ticketed for that very offense. In defense of the state of Utah, it was in Provo, where I swear the patrolmen have quotas to meet. As an off-hand guesstimate, I would say roughly one third of the vehicles on the road locally do not have a front plate. Where I'm going with this is: Although dmvanswers.com lists New Mexico as a one-plate state, they also list 31 states that do require two. One could reasonably suppose that, as a government agency, S.H.I.E.L.D. would just double-plate all of its cars as SOP. Plus there's the point that was made earlier about how goofy the shot of a car backing up to the camera would look.

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

Saw it last night, and loved every minute of it. Don't have many criticisms and I'd say it's a very solid sequel; better than average.

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

What a joke.

These are called character arcs, not plots.
He is calling every character and their action within the movie its own plot. By that reasoning a movie with more than one charater has more than one plot.
Forget ensemble pieces anymore cause this critic is going to see any and all movies as having too many plots.

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

I mostly agree with this, except that I'm not a fan of AC/DC, so two songs was plenty for me.
I voted Average.

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9RFv0TUR8g[/yt]

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

So if you could speak perfect Russian, would you start speaking it with an accent as soon as someone found out you were American?

People don't generally want to have an accent...

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

Natasha isn't supposed to have an accent. Master Spies usually don't. Whenever she has the accent it's because the writers aren't doing their homework or it's just played for laughs/camp factor (like in "Superhero Squad")

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

Agreed that it's not quite an F. The mere presence of Robert Downey Jr. & Gwyneth Paltrow precludes that. However, even on my most charitable day, I can't see grading this movie above a C+. On an uncharitable day, it bores me to D- levels. It's sadly painful in its averageness and lack of plot cohesion.

The Tony Stark is dying plotline didn't have the weight it should have. I understand that they want to keep a sense of fun to the Tony Stark character, but I think it doesn't diminish his humor at all if we find out that it's masking a genuine fear of death. It's an interesting question: What would a superhero do if he knew he only had a year to live? Sadly, the movie doesn't explore that to any satisfaction. I would have liked to see how Pepper Potts would have reacted had she found out about Tony's illness before he was cured. Also, the temporary stop-gap treatments given to him by Black Widow took away from the urgency of the storyline.

In general, the Avengers elements of the film were a distraction. I would have kept their scenes down to a minimum. (BTW, when Nick Fury was in the donut shop, did anyone else expect Emil Blonsky to show up and try to rob it?)

As with the 1st Iron Man, the best part of the movie was watching Robert Downey Jr. be eccentric. I'm always up for more of this, but personally, I think it's more entertaining when he gets to play off of Jude Law & Rachel McAdams in Sherlock Holmes. In Iron Man, it seems like most of his quips are exchanged with a disembodied computer voice.

Gwyneth Paltrow was again entertaining as Pepper Potts, but I felt like, despite her promotion, they didn't really do anything new with the character.

I wish Terrance Howard had come back as Col. Rhodes. Don Cheadle is a great actor but he seems very out of his element in a superhero movie. He doesn't have the same kind of casual movie star swagger that Howard has. I could picture Howard carrying a War Machine spin-off. I can't imagine Cheadle doing that. I also could see a friendly chemistry between Howard & Downey that I couldn't see between Cheadle & Downey.

Scarlett Johansson makes a credible, sexy action hero but she didn't seem to display much of a personality on screen. Come to think of it, I haven't been particularly impressed with her performances in any movies that I've seen her in. It would have been nice if she had gotten to play more scenes with Tony Stark, seeing the two of them try to adjust to each other's personalities while Pepper is off being the new CEO.

Weakest of all are the villains in the film. I wasn't as annoyed with Justin Hammer's antics as some people were. However, since he was such a light-weight, it demanded that Ivan Vanko be an awesomely terrifying big bad. Instead, he was more like a punk-ass sidekick. When he was first introduced with his dying father, I thought that his character was going to build into something interesting. Instead, his character never progressed beyond that point. Nor is he particularly compelling from an action standpoint. He only appears in 2 big fight scenes, and in both of those, he gets pretty thoroughly pwned by Iron Man. There's no sense of jeopardy in any of the fight scenes, as opposed to the terrifying mismatch of Iron Monger vs. Iron Man in an underpowered chest piece at the climax of the 1st film.

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

Yeah, Cheadle is a great actor but he was out of his element in this movie. He's not a campy comic-book movie actor. He doesn't have that... range. If that makes any sense.

RDJ has enough range in his ability to do campy, to do action, comedy, serious, etc. Cheadle is straight drama, nothing wrong with that at all, he just seemed out of place here If they couldn't get Howard to come back (or didn't want him to, not sure what happened there) they should've found another black actor who has better experience and presence in movies like this.

Again, Cheadle is a great actor nothing at all wrong with him. He just brought too much of a "straight man" seriousness to this role. Watch the first movie and the "fun" Howard had with the role and his "next time, baby" when he looked at what (presumably) was to be his exo-suit. A lot of fun in it.

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

And oddly enough, Cheadle occasionally can do funny character stuff, like in the Ocean's 11 movies. But comic book movies often require a delicate balance of bringing lots of naturalistic personality to a role that's written to be a near total cypher. Some actors, including many of the greatest actors in history, just aren't able to pull off a role that asks for a "movie star," not an "actor." (Oppositely, there are "movie stars" that can be incredibly successful, yet cannot work in more nuanced "actor" roles. Bruce Willis is an obvious example.)

As for why Terrence Howard isn't in Iron Man 2, I thought it had something to do with money. IIRC, Howard was getting paid more money on the 1st movie than Robert Downey Jr. (Why? Because Howard had a better agent and Downey was still recovering from his decade in the wilderness. Downey didn't really become "bankable" again until Iron Man came out.) By replacing Howard with Cheadle, they saved millions.

EDIT: BTW, I did like how they handled the Howard/Cheadle changeover in Iron Man 2. "Yes, it's me. I'm here. Deal with it."

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

I didn't mind all the "plots" at all. Certainly kept the action moving right along. I was never bored or confused. Sure, the S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff seemed a bit shoehorned in, but that's setup for future movies. (Hmm, did that reviewer actually miss the S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff? That qualifies as more of a plotline than most of that other crap.)

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

That's the way I understood it too. Tony is dying, he gives his company to Pepper and the scene where he says the suits don't allow unauthorized access but Rhodes is able to help himself, I thought meant that Tony had bequeathed the suits to Rhodes. He just wasn't expecting Rhodes to take one so soon!

I did enjoy the movie. I really hope for IM3 that Favreau dials back on his own role, that was too much - he was getting in the way in this movie. And please can Tony and Pepper manage to finish a sentence each? That got tiresome really fast!

Oh, and does Favreau have a shoe fetish or something? Both Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johanssen were wearing ludicrously high heels that neither of them could walk in very well.

RDJ and Mickey Rourke were fantastic though - and made the movie worth watching just by themselves.

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

I voted above average. The first one was a little better, but overall it's pretty dam good. I agree, i'd like to see more actual Iron Man, but this was Tony's story. I loved how Shield got involved and the setup for Avengers. Sam Rockwell was awsome. I give it a B/B+ with the fist one bieng A. Dark Knight bieng A+. One thing I was hoping to see was Tony bieng captured and realy getting the shit kicked out of him. I bet we will see something like this in the 3rd one. Oh yeah the suit case was awsome, I want to see that agian.

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

I think this columnist in Moviehole has a good grasp of what went wrong with IM 2 (though I disagree with his praise for Rockwell's performance):

http://www.moviehole.net/201024740-the-cynical-optimist-why-the-love-for-iron-man-2

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

I was disappointed by the movie, but I can't say I had a problem with the number of characters of storylines in it. I thought the story was pretty easy to follow, and flowed pretty well for what it was.

My problem was that the story being told just wasn't that compelling. I didn't really care about Tony's battle with the Senate committee, I didn't find Vanko to be a terribly interesting or threatening villain, and Hammer was too wimpy and annoying to be taken seriously at ALL.

The only thing that did interest me was Tony's deteriorating health, but that was never explored or used in any meaningful way. It was basically just one more technological puzzle for him to figure out.

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

Yawn. It's the 3rd best Batman film.

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

: 0

 

Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)

RDJ is the only thing that saves this from being an F.

F+.