Scrap Metal Heap
The summer’s first blockbuster, Iron Man 2, bursts upon the screen with a sleek look, high-tech gadgetry and impressive firepower. But for all its bluster and beauty the film feels empty. Characters who should be compelling are merely watchable. The workmanlike story carries us along but never fully engages. We spend two hours admiring the visuals, mildly entertained, but unable to quash that feeling in our gut that something doesn’t quite add up.
Mickey Rourke is the best thing in the film, his Ivan Vanko a worthy villain, even if it does seem a bit silly and convenient that the brutish Vanko also happens to be a physicist and software whiz. But the promise of a great villain battling Iron Man, central to a film like this, is shunted to the side after a promising start, interrupted by the introduction of a second villain who is given equal footing and greater screen time than Vanko. The second villain is Justin Hammer, corporate nemesis of Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) . Sam Rockwell does a fine job as Hammer, prancing about the stage, plotting ways to destroy his rival. But he doesn’t have the brute strength or physical courage to don a metal suit and battle Iron Man the only way that really matters. As a result, the Stark-Hammer battle can never engage at its most elemental level, crucial for an action film. That role is left to Vanko, who reemerges in the climax after using Hammer’s corporate assets to construct drones capable of battling Iron Man and his own high-tech suit for the same purpose. But by then the tension so effectively built between Stark and Vanko in the film’s opening scenes has been largely dissipated.
Along the way we’re treated to several storylines. Tony Stark is slowly poisoned by the palladium in the heart-piece keeping him alive. Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) becomes CEO of Stark Industries when Stark signs over the role to her. Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) is the notary from Legal who witnesses the transfer of power, her killer looks and lethal moves suggesting more than meets the eye. Only one of these plot lines works (hint, it’s not the first two). Stark eventually solves his self-poisoning dilemma by constructing a new periodic element in a visually intriguing but mentally incomprehensible scene in which his long dead Father holds the key. Potts moves from personal/administrative assistant to CEO in lightning speed and begins spouting on the phone to underlings about patents and intellectual property as if she’s earned a law degree at night.
By contrast, ScarJo is a welcome presence, her arrival in Tony Stark’s inner circle revealed to be part of a plan instituted by a one-eyed Government agent, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Fury is assembling a team, code-named “Avengers”. Yes my friends, the promise of an Avengers film is real, one action flick in which all the Marvel superheroes (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor, Captain America, et. al.) combine forces. Now that will be something to see!
As for Iron Man 2, it lured me in at first, moving with great promise from the cold dark corners of Siberia, to the sparkling luxury and breathtaking beauty of Monaco. But it returned to Earth and became pedestrian when it moved back to Stark’s mansion in Malibu, Hammer’s industrial facilities and a strange gathering in Flushing, New York called the Stark Expo, a pop-culture extravaganza attended by the masses, but showcasing Stark as Iron Man and the latest military-industrial hardware.
It’s a strange thing to witness the general public admiring Iron Man like the latest reality TV star. But that’s what he’s become in the Iron Man franchise, a pop culture icon who thumbs his nose at Congress, especially Senator Stern (Gary Shandling) in funny and effective Congressional hearing scenes while personally ensuring world peace.
If only he could guarantee a sequel worthy of the original.
6½ of 10 on the Movie Fraction Rating System™
Iron Man 2
Starring Robert Downey, Jr.
Directed by Jon Favreau
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