Iron Man 2: Rise of the Avengers
By Roz Young May 19, 2010
Do you guys remember how awful Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was? I mean, the Silver Surfer was cool, but otherwise, ouch. Iron Man 2 was not nearly as bad as 4:RotSS. I give the new Iron Man 7.5 zombie squirrels out of 10. It was fun, reasonably fast paced and exciting, and Robert Downey Jr. was good. If you like comic book action movies that don’t have too much sex and violence, this is your “summer” blockbuster. Ok, from here on in, there will be spoilers, so if you keep reading and it spoils the movie for you, that’s your own gosh darn fault.
Part of the problem with sequels is the anticipation. Especially when the first movie was as fantastic as Iron Man, and the casting of Downey Jr. as Tony Stark was genius... Then, you throw in a new badass villain, a hot babe, and people are going to expect a lot from your movie. I went to Iron Man 2 expecting to blown away. I really did think I might have to hold on to the back of my skull to prevent bits of cranium from messing up the theatre. And I was let down.
First of all, the new relationship magic is gone, so it’s not amazing to watch Tony Stark strut about and just be his wonderfully egotistical, self destructive self. It’s still fun, and I enjoy it, but we’ve got hot Scarlett Johansson to showcase here people! Also, Terrence Howard is out! Wha what? He’s been replaced by Don Cheadle. I don’t agree with the internets on this one, I don’t think Cheadle was better. He was good, but I hate my characters getting swapped on me.
We’ve got a new villain, Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash, in this movie. Now, either dude cannot do a Russian accent or he played the role pretty subdued. I liked it, but when you slow play your character for the first three quarters of the movie, I expect you to pull something freakin’ awesome out of your ass for the end. And... He goes out like a chump. Serious cheese. Stark and Rhodes (as War Machine) have to come together after a friendship destroying spat, pinky swear to never fight again, and use their buddy move to down the bad guy. Or something like that, close enough. Really? Laaaaame. Also, Sam Rockwell reprises his roll as bad businessman from Charlie’s Angels and gets scolded by Pepper at the end. Take that! A good scolding!
On to the love of my life, Scarlett, and her debut as the Black Widow. She looks great, but I gotta say, her character doesn’t have too much going on. She’s a glorified secretary/SHIELD secret agent. At one point, Stark says she’s like a “triple agent”, but I only count two sides to her character Tony, sorry. But! If she had been working with Whiplash (she is Russian after all), then that would have been super cool.
This brings me to what I dislike most about Iron Man 2, all of the SHIELD stuff and the attempts to ignite the Avengers. It may just be a personal feeling of mine, but the Avengers are a stupid superhero group to begin with and Captain America is the most ridiculous “captain” of them all (just behind Captain Crunch). With a group whose founding members include Ant-Man and the Wasp, why would you want to make them into a movie? I love Hulk, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t need to see him team up with Iron Man and Captain Americheese and fight crime, or evil, or both. Also, you’ve got to get Thor in there somewhere (spoiler for the end of the movie), and now we’re getting into characters that have “magic” abilities. And Iron Man does not. Are we going to go there? I guess we are. Bring on the Scarlet Witch, because it’s about to get weird in here. Also, Chris Evans (the Human Torch) will be playing Captain America, so we’re back to where this lazy review started, with the Fantastic Four.
In the end, although I’m complaining a lot here, I did enjoy Iron Man 2. I love Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark and Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts. When they finally kiss, there should have been more lead up to that romance, but I’ll take what I can get in a superhero movie. Iron Man 2 is great fun, lots of robot on robot violence, and Scarlett Johansson looks fabulous in her tight black cat suit.
As another quick aside, I would love it if Thor says, “The hammer is my penis” at some point during his movie.