Re: Iron Man 2 - Grading & Discussion Thread (spoilers guaranteed)
Saying this movie is an "F" is pure hyperbole. It's no-where near being one of the most terrible movies made. Is it the greatest? No. Is it mediocre? At worst I'd say "Yes." Is it F-Worthy like Batman and Robin or pretty much any movie ever featured on MST3K? No way.
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.
