May 12, 2010
Alcoholic Genius Man 2
NevznachaY, your thread title on Talking Time was literally TOO AWESOME not to steal. Sorry. Had to be done. You rock.
Anyway, I saw Iron Man 2 day one, and I was very pleased with it. It was pretty much exactly what I wanted out of a sequel to the first, and it was a lot of fun.
There are plenty of flaws to be found, though. The movie is really over-extended, with a lot of characters and stuff going on that, unless you get a primer beforehand, might not make much sense. For example, the movie never really explains much about who Black Widow is, or even calls her Black Widow. I also think a damn good argument can be made that, by making Whiplash able to so easily make his own suit, you are really sort of insulting Stark’s genius and devaluing his abilities. Apparently everything about it is supposedly so complex that most big governments can’t handle it. In the first movie, at least, The Dude was having a team of people work with Tony’s blueprints to make his suit. It made a little more sense. Whiplash, although completely badass, was working out of an old apartment building.
Still, I don’t know. I had no problem turning the parts of my brain that look for that stuff off, and just focusing the parts of my brain that enjoy seeing Robert Downey Jr. do things on a screen. He is still the PERFECT Tony Stark, and he is so much fun to watch that I honestly have a hard time caring about plot problems because he makes them all okay in my eyes. Maybe that’s silly. Maybe I should hope for more. But man, he just makes it fun.
There was also some action. Some stuff blew up, and Iron Man shot some lasers and stuff. That was pretty cool too, I suppose. The CG is solid, and there’s nothing at all wrong with it.
…the more I attempt to explain why I liked the movie, the more it’s clear that it’s purely about the actors and the acting. They were fun. They were very fun. People were talking, in said Talking Time thread, about how nice it would be to have a superhero movie that’s just character development. I think that this group could come very close to pulling that off. Still, though, they need to sell toys, and excite kids to ticket sales, so I guess it’s simply unlikely.
Still, I suppose I recommend it, because ROBERT DOWNEY JR. If you really liked the first one, I don’t think you’ll have a problem liking this one. If you didn’t see the first one, well, I think you should see that one first. It’s a little stronger, and it’ll give you a good idea on whether this sequel is worth your time. That’s about all the advice I can effectively give, apparently.