Benz Eye View: Iron Man 2

Welcome back to the MCU Marathon, and our next installment is considered to be the worse of the MCU films.

Iron Man 2

Pros: 

1.) Despite all of the problems that this movie has, Robert Downey, Jr. is still great as Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man.  I already stated why in the first Iron Man review, so if you want to know some details, go to this review:

Benz Eye View: Iron Man

2.) Just like its predecessor, the CG is still as impressive as ever.  Once again, if you want to know the details, check out the first Iron Man review linked above this pro.

3.) While Robert Downey, Jr. deserves all the praise in his role as Iron Man, the other actors deserve some credit as well.  What makes these actors work is their chemistry with one another, especially with Tony and his friends.  Don Cheadle as James Rhodes a.k.a. War Machine fits right in the main cast despite replacing Terrance Howard (considering it was reported he was hard to work with).  Mickey Rourke was a welcome addition (even though he was wasted).  Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff a.k.a. Black Widow would initially be all right in this movie, but gets better from The Avengers and after.  Even the director, Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan had an expanded role that was nice to see.  Give the cast some credit; Robert Downey, Jr. needs someone to talk to in this movie.

 

Cons: 

1.) The overall plot is an absolute mess.  Where do I even begin with here?  There is an antagonist named Ivan Vanko who wants revenge against Tony Stark, because he wants to prove that Iron Man is not invincible.  After losing to him in a small battle at Monaco, he disappears from the movie until the third act since he has to help Justin Hammer, Tony Stark’s rival (who also acts like a teenager who does not know how to do business with others and fails to realize that Vanko is using him) to create Iron Man suit duplicates.  Not only that, Tony Stark’s arc reactor is slowly poisoning him (and how he deals with that I will get to in a moment).  Also, the United States government wants the Iron Man armor for themselves, but Stark refuses (something that should land him to jail, but that never happened).  This would eventually lead to a conflict between Tony Stark and James Rhodes since Rhodes has to get the armor from Stark.  I can unpack how none of this works, and it barely creates a cohesive movie.  One plot-line would disappear for a while, and when it comes back, I completely forgot it existed with the somewhat exception being Tony’s arc reactor poisoning him…

2.) …That sub-plot is pretty stupid considering how that was written.  First off, when Tony realizes that the arc reactor, the very thing that is saving his life, is poisoning him, he does absolutely nothing about it.  To be fair, he did try to find a cure for it (which is mentioned), but the movie shows him monkeying around most of the time from racing in Monaco to partying in his house.  It is not until Nick Fury comes in to tell him to get his butt back to work on that cure.  How he even found that cure is also puzzling to me.  Apparently, the cure (or in this movie’s case, the new element) is located in a diorama of the 1974 Stark Expo.  Unless if I am a complete idiot, how does that create a new element?  The fact that Tony Stark barely does anything in this movie makes it hard to like or care for him to the point that even the other characters feel exactly the same way.

3.) I understand why they had to do this, but the foreshadowing of the MCU is forced.  How was it forced?  At the lowest point for Tony (Rhodes just took one of the Iron Man suits from Tony), Nick Fury comes out of nowhere.  There is no foreshadowing, he just appears and tells Tony to get over his ego for a while and find a new element for his arc reactor.  Even if you have seen the after credits of the first Iron Man, it would still feel out of place.  The movie alludes to The Avengers in the end, but it was done improperly.  Thankfully, this was never done again in any of the other movies, but it could have been much worse.

Much worse…

 

Overall: 

Many have considered Iron Man 2 to be the worst of the MCU movies, and they are not wrong.  Despite having Robert Downey, Jr. back with his great acting, and having fantastic CG, the movie’s script is what brought this movie down.  Tony Stark barely does anything to fix his problem with his arc reactor other than fooling around, and it had to take a deus ex machina in a form of Nick Fury to make him do something.  Ivan Vanko is such an uninteresting antagonist that was barely even used (and a shamefully wasted use of Mickey Rourke’s time).  I cannot take Justin Hammer seriously as a CEO and as an antagonist with his teenage-like attitude.  The other characters are not much help, either.  The fact that War Machine was introduced was probably one of the few interesting things in this movie, but it still would not have saved it.  Overall, if this movie barely had any potential other than a few key moments.  It was a good thing Marvel Studios learned their lesson from the errors of this movie.  Until then, only fans of the MCU and Marvel comics would be interested in a movie that would be best forgotten.

3/10

The next MCU movie review will be the introduction to the god of Thunder himself.