The first Iron Man movie was hailed as a rousing success as the first project coming out of Marvel's new film division, Marvel Studios. The movie was hailed for bringing the iron-clad (pun intended) hero to both the big screen and modern era, buoyed by the superb comeback performance of Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark. The movie not only launched Marvel Studios and resurrected Downey's career, but also set the stage for an unprecedented plan to introduce several of Marvel's other heroes in their own films to set up the big daddy of them all, The Avengers movie.
Iron Man 2 doesn't depart too much from what made its predecessor so good. The action is high-octane and well-choreographed, and there is a lot of eye candy all around (particularly when it comes to Scarlett Johansson's scenes as Black Widow). The rock-infused soundtrack compliments what's happening on-screen while the narrative does a pretty good job exploring the inner conflicts of Tony Stark. The acting once again stands out across the board, headlined by the stellar Robert Downey, Jr.--though literally every role is played to perfection. Even Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer (a rival of Tony Stark), who comes off as being the typical annoying corrupt archetype ends up doing a good job balancing a passive-aggressive demeanor that you'd expect from someone in his position.
Despite everything it does well, director Jon Favreau's sequel does have a few missteps. The middle section of the movie has been criticized for being too talky, which I didn't find to be so much the problem as the fact that the characters are trying to constantly talk over each other, which just gets annoying. The writers also skip over a lot of the details, never mentioning Whiplash or Black Widow by name, only muttering War Machine in passing, and completely jumping over a new element that Stark discovers, neither naming it nor explaining how Tony overcomes the supposed "impossibility" of its synthesization. Finally, despite Mickey Rourke's standout acting job as Whiplash, the character itself was poorly-written, had motivations that I flat out just didn't buy, and had pretty truncated fight sequences.
At the end of the day, Iron Man 2 does far more right than it gets wrong. Even with its shortcomings, its a very entertaining summer blockbuster that comes very close to the success of the original. The movie nails its role as a set for 2012's The Avengers and sets the stage for Thor and Captain America to fill in the rest of the gaps.
OVERALL GRADE: B+
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