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For Pete's Sake, People, Iron Man 2 was a Good Movie

Gaith said:
Just because he's a goofball who doesn't have Tony's style doesn't mean he can't serve as an example. But while I may have overstated my case, I still think it's a great character and performance, and I don't give a hamster's dick about its comics origins.
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For once, we agree.:techman:

I swear, some are acting like it's Batman & Robin or Electra.
Folks will be singing IM2 praises once Green Hornet & Green Lantern come out.
Then maybe we'll see what a truely disappointing comic book based movie is.
 
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I really didn't care for it much. It's not an awful film by any stretch, but nor would I call it good, at best a C in my book and that really isn't something to be pleased with, a C is something I would get in trouble for getting, so I don't see why I should treat the film any different.

It had a great cast of actors, and I never really felt like they were inhabiting the characters. And most of them can be exceptional (there is a lot of talent there). And Iron Man 1 had a lot of heart and a great sense of fun to it, here I felt it was just paint by numbers. And as for the drama, I don't think they gave it anything more then just lip service. So as a romp I was unimpressed, as a drama I was unimpressed.

Now Gaith mentions in his original posts some poor to awful films, and this is no where even close to that, but it certainly isn't a strong film either. Nor was it one I recommended this summer.
 
Yeah I should clarify that I found the film disappointing overall but it isn't an awful film by any means. It just has a great many flaws. If one can get past those flaws then they will be able to enjoy it. The first film had a certain charm to it that this film lacked considerably. The score was good though, much better than the first's score.
 
Timby said:
Iron Man 2's problem is that its script is just all over the place, and it hits on several ideas but never takes any time to actually develop them. It feels so uninspired, too: The first movie is Stark learning to not be an uncaring jackass and grappling with near-death, so what's a good idea for the second film? Do the same thing! Neither primary plot (Stark's armor killing him / Whiplash raising hell) is satisfactorily resolved, either. Stark's life is saved by magic element out of fucking nowhere that was hidden in a decades-old architectural rendering, while Whiplash does some stuff and then blows up real good.

Some parts of it are just hilariously hypocritical, too. "Vanko's father was a bad man, because he wanted to use the arc reactor technology to make money!" *has this discussion in an oceanfront mansion on a private island*
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Totally agreed.

Then there's the failed effort to connect Tony to Vanko by saying their fathers worked together. It didn't create any kind of personal connection to the story.

Hammer is a buffoon. His only purpose was to make Tony look good at everything and in the end he couldn't even harm Pepper Potts.

Mickey Rourke was wasted here. A great performance/character is not one who sits in the background, mumbling incoherently.
 
flemm said:
That said, I think Batman Begins was mediocre at best. This was a competent but generic reboot that took surprisingly few risks.
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I much preferred Batman Begins to the The Dark Knight though. The latter really did feel as though it was created by a team embarrassed by the source material.

At least Begins had crazy hallucinogenic fear gas sequences and armies of bats. Y'know, comic book type stuff.
 
^ I thought they honored the source material in "The Dark Knight" not embarrassed about it. I'm not sure taking out the more comic booky elements of the Joker was being embarrassed.
 
Frankly it all depends there have been what about 2000 Batman comics out there and over the course of that history there has been a huge difference in story tone (and quality). I don't think you can exclude any real style of storytelling if you look at the vast library of various batman stories.
 
^ I think they took the stories they felt could be translated best to film and adapted them. The stories that Nolan has cited in the past would seem to fit that assumption on my part. In both "Iron Man" stories there seems to be influence from source material but not directly focused from them if that makes sense.
 
Nope. By mirroring Tony in many ways (occupation, trying to seduce the reporter), he helped Tony see not only how amoral he used to be before his capture, but also how shallow he used to be... thus playing another part in Tony's maturation. Just because no one ever said this onscreen doesn't mean that's not what they were going for, and it totally works, imo.
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Tony also showed some growth by standing up to the senator and stopping him from getting the Iron Man armour, and also came to a rekoning of sorts with his father when he invented that new element to be used in his chest device (although he eventually will have to have that removed one day.)

People just don't know what they want, or they are being jaded with SF&F movies, which is why this movie got what it got. But you also have to see that not everybody loves the Iron Man movies, either: several online socialist and feminist reviews denounce it as a war-mongering movie, so that aspect has to be taken into account, unfortunately.
 
Admiral_Young said:
^ I think they took the stories they felt could be translated best to film and adapted them. The stories that Nolan has cited in the past would seem to fit that assumption on my part. In both "Iron Man" stories there seems to be influence from source material but not directly focused from them if that makes sense.
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Yes and agreed.
Plus I don't think the general mass public knows all or much of any of the source material and they really wouldn't care. Many of them probably wouldn't notice many of the flaws in the story either because to them, this is their first exposure to Iron-Man. Many still associate Iron-Man only the Black Sabbath song. While not as charming as the first, I think there was enough in it to satisfy the general public. If it didn't it would have left the theaters as fast as the Punisher did.
 
exodus said:
Set Harth said:
DarthPipes said:
A great performance/character is not one who sits in the background, mumbling incoherently.
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Unless you count Brando in Apocalypse Now.
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Brando made it one of his trademarks.

I myself am going to add Ted Levine but many know him better as mumbling "Buffalo Bill" from "Silence of the Lambs".
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Actually, Monk was halfway into its first season before i remembered that. Leland Stottlemeyer is probably more in the modern viewing public's mind than Buffalo Bill.
 
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