Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
5/12/10
We ask two things of movie
franchises, one fair and one not. On the one hand, we just want the
filmmakers (and doubly so the actors) to take us back to the world they
created the first time around. We want the reality of the original
movie's universe to be reinforced by our ability to reenter it. The
other is that we ask them to somehow make exactly the same movie, only
completely different. We want to feel all the same things we felt
upon seeing the original the first time, and since a big part of that is
the joy of discovery, of meeting these characters and experiencing a world
we haven't seen before, that can't happen. So it is that inevitably
a person approaches the likes of Iron Man 2 with trepidation, knowing
that the odds are heavily stacked against it being as much fun to experience
the continuing adventures of Tony Stark and friends as it was to see it
all begin. And I'll admit, it's not. But what Jon Favreau and
his cast have done is a pitch perfect example of that earlier, more reasonable
goal, recreating the Iron Man world so successfully, Iron Man 2
could be the lost extra reels of its predecessor. New heroes and
villains compete for space with our favorites, but most of them earn their
keep. And most importantly, Robert Downey Jr. does nothing to dissuade
us that he in fact IS Tony Stark, one of the greatest movie characters
of our time. Iron Man 2 is a whole lot of fun, and all you
could reasonably expect. As long as you don't let your own expectations
mess it up.
Yes, America, Tony Stark
(Robert Downey Jr.) IS Iron Man, and that revelation has allowed the billionaire
to live larger and larger as the world's first superpowered celebrity.
He's poured his efforts into the Stark Expo, an old school World's Fair
of futuristic technology patterned after a similar event his late father
Howard (John Slattery) staged decades before. But while he parties
with models and verbally routs an anti-Iron Man congressional hearing presided
over by Senator Stern (Gary Shandling) and industrial rival Justin Hammer
(Sam Rockwell), Tony hides a dark secret. The power source of the
reactor that runs not only the suit, but also his heart is killing him.
After appointing longtime secretary Pepper Potts (Gweneth Paltrow) the
new CEO of Stark Enterprises, Tony selects a new assistant, the mysterious
Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) and pours his energy into partying
like it's 1999. Problem is, as much as he tells himself that the
Iron Man suit has eliminated all threats to the world, the technology behind
it is about to unleash an armored arms race. It starts with a very
different suit designed by Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), the son of a disgraced
Howard Stark colleague. This compels the Air Force to task Tony's
best friend Jim Rhodes (Don Cheadle) to get his hands on an Iron Man suit.
All the while, Hammer has plans for his own army of men in suits, developed
in secret by Vanko. As the world teeters on the brink of armored
chaos, can anything pull Tony Stark out of his downward spiral?
As in the original, fans
of the Iron Man comics will recognize many of their storylines tossed
into a blender by writer Justin Theroux, including elements of the famous
“Demon in a Bottle” arc that saw an alcoholic Stark replaced as Iron Man
by Rhodes, who later went on to wear his own suit as War Machine.
Vanko is a composite of Iron Man foes Whiplash and the Crimson Dynamo,
and Hammer a much-younger version of one of Stark's industrialist/inventor
rivals. Rushman proves to be an undercover Natasha Romanoff, an ally
of Iron Man under the alias the Black Widow. And the notion of the
armor's technology proving potentially fatal to its inventor has come up
more than once over the years. All of this plays out in a fairly
busy tale that lacks the elegance of the original's single-villain origin
story, but is vastly better motivated and more structurally sound than
your typical superhero sequel.
Although it has traces of
telltale sequel bloat, Iron Man 2 is a boatload of fun because it
manages to recapture the original's most unique asset: the spontaneity
of its cast. Downey Jr. was born to play Tony Stark, and the potholes
in his road to redemption only allow the actor to dig deeper into his own
troubled past to flesh him out. The great time Tony has burning himself
to the ground makes these scenes all the more potent, particularly a drunken
birthday party where our hero stumbles around in his armor while a crowd
of hotties cheers him on and Pepper and Jim look on in disgust. Downey
Jr. is said to improvise a lot of Stark's dialog, and I'm certainly inclined
to believe it, especially in a delightful sequence where his attention
is divided between an important discussion with Pepper and a distracting
stress relief thingie spinning around on her desk. There's pretty
much nothing he doesn't do in this role: Stark is both awesome and
pitiful, hilarious and despairing, courageous and self-serving, romantic
and caddish. And it's to both the actor and writer's credits that
we can buy into his redemption arc for a second movie in a row. A
man will do funny things when he's dying.
He also enjoys that Tracy/Hepburn
crackle with Paltrow, who is never less than convincing in a role that
suffers from a bit of sequelitis. Hopefully future Iron Man adventures
can find better things to do with her. Cheadle is a solid upgrade
over IM1's Terrence Howard, particularly since no one plays morally challenged
while holding his head up high better than he does. While Howard's
take on Rhody was a starry-eyed optimist, Cheadle seems like a man who
knows his best friend warts and all, and shares more of them than he might
care to admit. Paul Bettany is once again a great fit for the voice
of Stark's computer JARVIS. Favreau is fun comic relief in a greatly
expanded role as Stark/Pepper's bodyguard Happy Hogan, while Samuel L.
Jackson's Nick Fury isn't as well served with a role that requires he spend
a lot of time providing exposition at restaurant booths and patio tables.
Then there's the newcomers.
Mickey Rourke just looks ridiculously badass, so he's a perfect choice
to play a musclebound supervillain fresh off 15 years in a Russian prison.
He plays Vanko's combination of brutality, vengeance, intelligence and
duplicity perfectly, further cementing his comeback. Rockwell is
a delight as a man who lacks all of Stark's redeeming features while reveling
in a nonexistent rivalry. Hammer is a loser, a pathetic guy with
just enough money and power to make serious trouble, but it's to the actor's
credit that he never resorts to shtick and can still muster menace when
he needs it. Johansson has probably never looked more beautiful
in a movie and does a great job with the stunts, but her performance doesn't
really fit in with the loosey-goosey tone the rest of the cast sets.
If she is in fact to be around for the duration of the Avengers franchise,
I hope I can warm up to the Black Widow when I get to know a little more
(which is to say anything) about her.
Did someone just mention
The Avengers? Good thing, because Iron Man 2 is in fact two
sequels in one, following up on itself and following The
Incredible Hulk as the third film in the Marvel Universe franchise
currently scheduled to continue in next summer's Thor and Captain
America: The First Avenger and 2012's The Avengers.
It includes significant visual winks to next summer's heroes (one of which
brings the house down), and follows the process of Fury putting together
a team that currently seems to have no official members. Color me
a bit disappointed there: at the end of Hulk, Stark seemed
pretty firmly on board the Avengers bandwagon he now dismisses as a “superpowered
boy band”, and I'm not sure the movie so much presents forward motion in
the Avengers saga as a chance to watch briefly as it circles the runway
and awaits its turn to land.
As for Iron Man 2
itself, the movie presents quite a bit of nifty summer spectacle, particularly
once the gloves come off in the third act. The robot-packed climax
should send little boys of all ages into geek spasms. I enjoyed the
teamwork of Iron Man and War Machine, particularly the way Cheadle plays
sequences where he's not in control of his own armor. Favreau goes
twelve rounds with the temptation to play to the back row, and Iron
Man 2 isn't the would-be Oscar contender the original was. But
for the most part the shenanigans are brief and never humiliate the cast
themselves. I also appreciated that the inevitable cameo by a little
kid isn't cutesy and involves actual danger, while the franchise's running
in-joke of Stan Lee being confused for other celebrities is one of the
better uses of his omnipresent Marvel cameos.
So, to summarize: Tony
Stark's back, and if that's not good enough for you, Iron Man 2
packs in as many additional heroes and villains as it can safely contain.
It's funny and exciting, and as long as you're prepared for a plot that
more resembles that of a serialized TV show bridging between past and future
events than a totally self-contained story, you should be in good shape.
It is a sequel, after all. It can only do so much. But what
it does do, it does very well. |
