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[piecewise]

Iron man 2 has become somewhat of a phenomenon as of late, at least thats what it's insistent marketing would have us suspect. But I guess I fell for their tactics because here I am, fresh off the movie and with a head full of impressions just waiting to be written. First I'd like to say that I got pretty much exactly what I expected from this movie: It was a comic book movie, it had action, silly plot, extremely loose interpretations of physics and some neat though not ground breaking characters. Rather then actually praise everything thats good Its probably easier for me to point out what I didn't like and just use a great big blanket statement of "everything else was great though."

First thing I didn't like was the pacing. The early movie shows the main villain, the current predicament tony is in and the initial conflict between tony and the villain. This part of the movie actually has a pretty good pace, its just around the half way point that things start to seem a little rushed. The big huge fatal problem Tony is facing is solved in about 5 minutes with zero effort and the main villain is defeated in a rather silly way. Thats the other big problem I have with this movie, the villain. Its not that he's not good, no far from it, its that he's too good and that every fight seems rigged to make him lose. In the initial fight, the one shown in all the trailers, he gets hit by a car THREE TIMES and just keeps going but when Iron man knocks him down once the fight is over. I won't ruin the final fight but lets just say that it seems an awful lot like a writer suddenly remembered that Iron man was supposed to win and uses a combination of uncharacteristic actions and a blatant deus ex machina to resolve the situation. In all the final fight of the film actually wasn't that great either, 90% of it was Iron man running away before using an extremely convenient weapon we'd never seen before to fix everything in about 3 seconds. The final battle with Whiplash only lasted about 30 seconds as well.

Some of the characters didn't really hold up too well either. Don Cheadle is great as Rhodey as is Rourke as Ivan but Tony skirts the line of scenery chewing a few times and every scene Pepper Pots is in becomes rather dull. Johansson as Black widow though probably holds honors for seeming the most vestigial. She barely does anything through out the entire film but stand there with a blank look on her face and when her great big fight scene comes its very anti-climatic and unimpressive. The visuals were pretty great overall though, the ironman transformation is still a CGI joy to behold, though Ivan's random salt and pepper hair would seem more at home on a middle school goth then a great villain. Soundtrack is supposedly ACDC though I can only remember them actually using recognizable ACDC songs maybe 3 times. Overall, its not a bad movie by any stretch its just not a great movie either. Its exactly what you expect and nothing more and I guess if you're ok with that then its all good. But if you're looking for a genre redefining masterpiece or even just a significant evolution above Iron man 1 then I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. 

I'd give it a 7.5/10

[fenrif]

I saw it on opening weekend.  I expected it to be utter crap, due to hearing things about it on the net. I was terribly dissapointed. It has a lot in common with Spiderman 3, and that's not a good thing. I got the distinct impression that marvel and the studio are trying to cram in as much as possible to set up the Avengers film and Iron Man 3. There are sub-plots, characters, and entire scenes that don't advance the plot, add depth to characters, or have any sort of action.

The characters themselves change randomly throughout the film to suit the plot. One minute someone is super nice, the next their a total arsehole for no reason. This happens to more than one character.

The antagonists didn't work for me at all. You have whiplash, who is hardly in the film (completely wasting the excellent casting of mickey rourke), has no real agenda or motive:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"I only want to make you bleed... because your dad fired my dad, oh wait, now I want to kill you!"

and you have the other buisnessman guy who is more comic relief than real enemy.

Whole scenes of the film make absolutely no sense.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When Rhodey steals one of Stark's suits, takes it to the military, who then get Sam Rockewell to come sell them weapons, because the military probobly doesn't have any guns... Then for some reason when Rockwell's character gives his big presentation war machine is there? So the military gave him the iron man armour? Is he trying to pretend he invented it?

Tony Stark hardly even wears the iron man armour. The majority of times he has it on he's doing something thrilling like eating doughnuts, or partying. This is one of the fundamental mistakes of the film I think. People watch Iron Man because having a suit of super armour is cool. They identify with that because they want a suit of iron man armour. The whole draw of the film is seeing iron man kick ass in the armour, flying around like a madman, doing badass things. Not eating his lunch, or sitting at a table.

The most disappointing part is that the film is incredibly boring. Long drawn out scenes where nothing happens plauge the film. There are about 2 and a half action scenes in the film, and they seemed to be alot shorter than the ones in the first film. Even in the action scenes, nothing comes close to the level of excitement of Iron Man 1. In the first scene of the film Iron Man stands before a crowd, in full iron man armour, and someone shouts "blow something up!" Iron Man replies "I don't have too, I allready did" and takes off the armour. This seems to be how the film makers felt too. If you've seen the trailer you've seen all the action. Literally, it's ALL in the trailer.

So yeah, I'm not a fan of Iron Man 2.