Iron Man 2 is basically the definition of a film for which I am happy to pay for a cinema ticket. It is, in fact, one of those films where you sit and grin stupidly for two hours, and then come out struggling to make any real sense of what just happened.
The first film was marvellous for a number of reasons; mainly because it was big and brash and explosive, while its central characters were undeniably only human. Robert Downey Jr, in the lead role of the narcissistic Tony Stark and the title role of Iron Man, oozed charisma while simultaneously portraying a hero that wasn’t afraid to shoot the villains – or, for that matter, leave them to the mercy of a baying mob.
Downey Jr is just as charismatic in his second outing, but largely the film suffers from the same things that the first film suffered from in its closing act: the lack of a convincing villain or reason to keep fighting. This time, instead of watching Jeff Bridges learn how to use an unnecessarily large Iron Man suit in forty-five seconds (as opposed to the weeks it had taken Stark to perform the same feat with a much smaller version), we have Mickey Rouke doing exactly the same thing: building a huge suit and failing to put much of a dent in the hero.
Rouke plays Whiplash, one of Iron Man’s classic enemies (if you can call any of his enemies ‘classic’, that is), a man whose main ploy seems to be to create large electric whips that don’t really do a lot to Iron Man. He is funded by Justin Hammer played in usual eccentric fashion by Sam Rockwell, who is basically in to collect a paycheque – don’t expect another Moon performance. Whiplash builds an army of robot drones to defeat Iron Man (given that man versus drone was a minor theme of the first film, one has to wonder how much attention was being paid to the writing here), while suiting himself up in a suit that has a set of even bigger and even less effectual whips.
The cast list is impressive: Downey Jr is rejoined by Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Bettany (as Jarvis), director Jon Favreau and Samuel L Jackson (who turned up in the last film after ninety percent of the audience had left), and joined by Don Cheadle, reprising the role previously held by Terrance Howard. Cheadle does a better job than his predecessor, and gets to don a suit of his own, pimped out with a selection of weaponry which, like Whiplash’s whips, doesn’t do very much. Also joining the cast is Scarlett Johannsson: SHIELD’s very own Black Widow and a very obvious slice of fan-pleasing boob-service.
The plot makes little sense: Tony Stark is dying from the palladium that powers the suits and that is saving his life. His role as Iron Man has reduced international terrorism, but is criticised (probably rightly) by everyone in authority as being too much power for one man. From there, we get a loosely strung together sequence of fights and witty dialogue that culminates inevitably in a widescreen explosion extravaganza.
Where this differs from, say, Transformers 2, is that this film is fun – stupid, certainly, but it is enjoyable nonsense. The fights are big and colourful, and Downey Jr is again chewing the scenery and fighting his co-stars for the limelight. Iron Man has always been a character that relies on deus ex machina, whether in the form of a big gun or armour that simply won’t let its wearer get scratched or in the miraculous discovery of a solution to whatever is ailing him, but that’s fine for the duration of the film – it’s only when you leave the cinema when the plot holes really become more obvious.
I enjoyed the film. It’s not as good as the first one, because it’s lost that edge that the first film had for the first two thirds, but it is definitely good eye candy, and the actors seem to be having a whale of a time, and their enthusiasm is infectious. People who weren’t paying close attention during the first film might struggle to catch up at first – Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury would be the obvious example of this – but Iron Man 2 isn’t trying to make you think. It just wants to take you for a ride.
PS: Comic fans will want to stay till the end of the credits again. However, people who know nothing about Marvel’s back catalogue might not want to bother.