"Iron Man 2" or "How to make a sidekick actually kick ass"

Well...Well....Well...yes this yet again not my review of "Hot Tub Time Machine" and I doubt there will be a full review of that one so let me just say I really liked it. Now on to Marvel Studios first comic book helping for us this year, "Iron Man 2".

Spoilers as usual

The film starts off with us seeing Mickey Rourke's terrible hair and cracked up face watching his father die while news reports of Tony Stark pour in. So the incredibly Russian looking Rourke plays Ivan Vanko who's dad apparently had some ties to Tony's father aswell. Ivan builds himself an arc reactor and the opening titles begin. The story then jumps to Tony jumping out of an aeroplane and into the Stark Expo with fireworks everywhere. Tony gives a speech and ect ect before being served with a supena to appear before the United States Senate who want Stark to hand over the Iron Man suit. Here we are introduced to another villain, Justin Hammer who owns Stark's rival company. After some witty banter Tony gets to keep his suit for a little while longer and leaves the sen. Also by this point we are made aware that the arc reactor in Stark's chest is slowly killing him.

So of course Tony decides to go to Monaco to watch a car he has entered into the race. For some stupid reason Stark decides that he is going to replace the driver who is very unhappy about the replacement. Enter Ivan who goes out onto the track and smashes a few cars with his energy whip things before cutting Stark's car in half. A brief battle ensues and Ivan is subdued. While in prison Ivan tells Stark about how their fathers were working together and about how Stark can't erase his warmongering past. This is followed by Ivan being broken out of prison by....Hammer. Turns out that he wants to use Ivan to design some armoured suits so he can supply them to the US military. By now we have also been introduced to Scarlet Johanssons Black Widow character as well.

Stark also hands over the company to Pepper Potts as he believes that he soon will be dying and won't be able to run the company from the grave. Anyhow Stark throws what he thinks will be his last birthday party and gets a little wasted leading to him doing some very stupid things with the iron man suit. Rhodes shows up and intervenes by borrowing the Mk II suit from the first film. A fairly awesome battle rages through the house destroying almost everything. Rhodes takes off with the suit and hands it over to the military believing that Stark can no longer have sole responsibility for the technology. In the morning we finally get to see Nick Fury as he shows up and gives Stark the mid movie motivation to try and solve his problem of dying soon. Eventually after we get the standard "no one likes you any more because your a dick" scenes he finally figures out that he needs to create a new element to power the iron man suit. He achieves this and seems to be getting back on track and has a new kick ass suit to boot.

I should also say that this is intercut with scenes between Hammer and Ivan that are quite funny and also supplying the weapons needed to pimp out Rhodie's suit. Hammer plans to launch his new technology at Stark's expo that we see at the beginning of the film so that the company can ensure its future as America's weapon supplier. The show goes along until Ivan seizes control of the drones he has created and the War Machine suit leading to a very un-interesting chase scene that lasts way too long. Black Widow and Happy Hogan race to Hammer's factory and get the War Machine suit back under Rhodie's control. This leads to the two taking on the drones which don't take long to finish off. Eventually Ivan shows up in a new kick ass suit of his own (Surprise!) and a fairly boring and anticlimactic fight takes place. Ivan blows himself up and ect ect. That's all you really need to know plot wise.

So what did I think? Well for a sequel the film is pretty much on par with the first "Iron Man" but that said it still suffers many of the faults the first film had as well. The climax is again one of the main problems, the main battle (Iron Man Vs. Whiplash) is maybe about a minute long. Instead we get the fight with the drones which takes a ridiculous amount of time. Again like in "Clash of the Titans" we get another boring chase sequence where nothing really happens, there is no drama in that chase sequence at all. Another problem is Ivan. While Rourke's performance was well done the character really makes little sense, especially when we are supposed to buy he's a physicist. You'd think he'd maybe be working in a university or something rather than plotting petty revenge on a man that really didn't do anything to him directly. Also Stark clearly decides at the last minute to enter the car race himself.... so why was Ivan going to destroy the car in the first place? He couldn't have known Stark would be there. Even if he was trying to get Iron Man's attention he didn't have to go Monaco to do it. He could have just gone to the Stark expo before this and smashed everything up. A lot of things really don't add up in the narrative. The movie also feels alittle long at times and really if it wasn't for the very talented cast the movie would be boring. And again while the film stays true to the first one there isn't any real building on what's going with the characters honestly seems to have nothing new to bring to the table.

Besides this the characters are well handled, War Machine becomes the most kick ass sidekick ever (take that Robin) and Sam Rockwell gives an equally impressive performance as Robert Downey Jr.

3 out 5 stars. (Ok, but not great)

Stay Tuned for another Retro-vision next week.

Also something else that troubles me...If your enemy can fly away at any moment, how would blowing yourself up with a self destruct kill him? Stark just flys away and you get blown up. Some physicist he is.