2010 | Dir. Jon Favreau | 125 Minutes
"You want my property? You can't have it. But I did you a big favor. I have successfully privatized world peace. What more do you want?"
While Tony Stark's health declines with the arc reactor in his chest steadily poisoning him, he distracts himself by re-instituting his father's Stark Expo and his behavior becomes more and more erratic. At his most vulnerable, Stark is met with challenges on all sides. The US Government puts pressure on Stark to hand over his Iron Man technology. Ivan Vanko, the son of his father's rival Russian counterpart, and Justin Hammer, inept and unscrupulous weapons developer, join forces to ruin him.
As its own stand-alone narrative, Iron Man 2 is a paper-thin film, presenting many potentially captivating plot points that fall flat or fizzle out. The subplot with the US Government only serves to establish Rhodey's War Machine alter ego. Villains Vanko and Hammer provide fodder for action scenes but offer no serious threat or dramatic heft. The heavy involvement of SHIELD in the storyline lays out the groundwork for future Marvel Studios films but does little to serve this one, save for giving Stark a remarkably convenient cure for his illness. The film's saving grace is its action scenes, expertly storyboarded by veteran animator Genndy Tartakovsky. Highlights include, a fight on a racetrack between Vanko armed with lethal electric whips and Stark equipped with a compact Iron Man suit unfolding from a suit case, an inebriated Iron Man and Rhodey sporting the Mark II suit throwing down in Stark's home, a sequence featuring Agent Natasha Romanoff taking out Hammer Industries security guards with extreme prejudice, and the final battle in which Tony and Rhodey fight Vanko and an army of Hammer drones flying through the Stark Expo and culminating in a facsimile Japanese garden.
Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow return as Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, naturally slipping back into their roles and building upon the chemistry they shared in the previous Iron Man film. Don Cheadle replaces Terrence Howard as James "Rhodey" Rhodes, charismatic as Stark's best friend with Rhodey's expanding role. Returning from Iron Man, director Jon Favreau has more to do as the bumbling Happy Hogan. Paul Bettany once again provides the humorously voice of Stark's computer system JARVIS. Also returning from the previous film are Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson, and Leslie Bibb as Vanity Fair reporter Christine Everhart.
New to the series, Scarlett Johansson plays sultry super spy Natasha Romanoff, convincingly stone cold as an infiltrator and skilled combatant. Mickey Rourke mostly phones in his performance rocking a campy Russian accent and a wild man look as Ivan Vanko, while character actor Sam Rockwell is cartoonishly evil and fun to watch as the grossly incompetent Justin Hammer. John Slattery appears briefly as Howard Stark in old film footage evoking a Walt-Disney-like persona. Comedian Garry Shandling is featured in small part as the smarmy US Senator Stern, verbally jousting with Stark at a senate hearing.
Despite presenting many intriguing plot points and offering truly innovative action sequences, Iron Man 2 is not nearly as effective as the first Iron Man film. It is an inferior sequel that is clearly more interested in what's to come in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and less interested in its own narrative.
POST-CREDITS STINGER
Dir. Kenneth Branagh
Agent Coulson travels to New Mexico when a mysterious hammer is discovered in the desert. The full version of this scene is featured in Thor.
STAN LEE CAMEO
Stan the Man appears early in the film as a Larry King lookalike when Stark meets his fans exiting his Stark Expo presentation.
FRAGMENTS
- Justin Hammer returns briefly in Marvel One-Shot: All Hail The King (available on the home video release of Thor: The Dark World)
- The film features cameos from Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, Oracle Corporation CEO Larry Ellison, news personalities Christiane Amanpour and Bill O'Reilly, and the late DJ AM Adam Goldstein playing themselves.
- Actress Kate Mara appears briefly as a US Marshall that serves Stark his summons to the US Senate
- Agent Coulson calls attention to the incomplete Captain America shield seen in the previous Iron Man film, and Stark subsequently uses it to balance a large cable
- A meeting between Stark and Nick Fury before the end of the film features a map that includes the fictional nation of Wakanda (to be further explored in Black Panther) clearly marked as a place of interest and news footage from the Hulk's rampage on the Culver University campus seen firsthand in The Incredible Hulk
SUPPLEMENTAL STUFF
- Video: AC/DC "Shoot To Thrill" (Iron Man 2 Version)
