BrockTalk

Let's face it. It sucks to be Iron Man 2. What's a movie to do when it has to follow in the footsteps of the likes of The Dark Knight and the original Iron Man; two movies that set the bar on how to make a comic book-to-movie adaptation? If you're Iron Man 2 then you try your hardest to surpass the mark set by these two films, but in the end you inevitably fall short.

Let me just start by saying that Iron Man 2 is not a bad movie; in fact, if this would have been the first for the franchise my feelings for this film would have probably been much more enthusiastic, Sadly for Iron Man 2, as the number in its' title so blatantly states, it is the second installment for the franchise which means that I as a viewer have a very well made template to use for comparison. The first film was light on its' feet, fun, and fresh. Iron Man 2 however, quickly gets bogged down by politics, Tony Stark's self-destructive pity party, and worrying too much about setting itself up for later films in the Marvel universe. I kept waiting for this movie to really take off, and it just never did. Every time it would start to rev its' engine it would quickly stop to check its' gauges one more time. Outside of the race track scene that everyone has no doubt seen in the previews by now, and a very silly party scene involving a drunk Stark wearing the suit and fighting his best friend James Rhodes; it's not until the final 20 minutes or so that we finally get some true Iron Man action, and even then the final confrontation is too quickly resolved. It really felt this was just a set-up movie reserving its' big payoff for a later installment; whether that be Iron Man 3 or the heavily hinted to in the film movies of Thor or The Avengers, I don't know.

There are no doubt some great actors and actresses backing up the charismatic Robert Downey Jr.  in Iron Man 2 including the returning Gwyneth Paltrow and  Samuel L Jackson, and new additions Micky Rourke, Scarlett Johannsen, Don Cheadle (filling in for Terrence Howard from the first film),  and Sam Rockwell who all turn in solid performances, but Iron Man 2 spends too much time trying to shuffle between its' main plot and many sub-plots that it ultimately doesn't give some of these characters enough screen time.

The original Iron Man took me by complete surprise, and thus I was really looking forward to Iron Man 2 hoping that they could somehow pull it off again. As I have previously stated, Iron Man 2 is by no means a bad movie, and other than the things that I have already mentioned I was really perplexed on to why I was not enjoying myself as much this time around.  After contemplating it for quite some time I realized that the main element I believe this movie is lacking that the first was full of is charm. Now that's not to say that 2 is completely void of charm, as Downey Jr. still plays the ego-driven Stark with the charisma he nailed in the first film, but the overall film is much more heavy-handed than the first; and where I found myself chuckling numerous times in the first, 2 only managed to squeeze maybe two very mild chuckles out of me. I still have a lot of interest and hope in this franchise, as Iron Man is just too cool of an on-screen superhero to write off, but this viewer is holding out hope that the next time the man in iron graces the screen he will leave me with the sense of awe that he left me with when we first met.