Iron Mayhem

I've written before about how Joss Whedon's role as writer and director of the upcoming movie The Avengers has made it a must-see for me, even though I don't tend to think too highly of comic book movies. (A friend once told me that you could add a full letter grade --at least -- to my review of a comic book movie and get a reasonable guess how the "average" movie-goer would receive it.)

Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for Marvel Studios), a whole suite of movies seems to be a required prerequisite for The Avengers. In some cases, I probably would have seen the movie in question anyway (exhibit: Captain America). In others, I almost certainly would not have (exhibit: Thor).

Somewhere in between falls Iron Man 2. I gave a B- to the first Iron Man movie, which is to say that I liked it overall, but felt it had quite a few flaws. The commercials for Iron Man 2 led me to suspect the sequel would be more of the same, which was enough of a deterrent that I never bothered catching it in the theater. But... required viewing and all.

Reading now what I wrote of the first Iron Man, "more of the same" feels right on the nose to me for describing the sequel. Once again, Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic, effortlessly portraying a smug asshole you ought to hate, but love instead. Gwyneth Paltrow brings fun spark to the always thankless role of the non-super-powered character in the superhero movie. The movie succeeds whenever it focuses on these characters.

Once again, the villain feels too cartoonish in comparison to the tone of the heroes. Sam Rockwell tears into an amped-up egghead with relish, but hits all the same notes he did as the heavy in Charlie's Angels. Mickey Roarke is a better anchor as a dark and brooding villain, but doesn't get enough screen time to really drive the story as much as he should. (Once again, for what must be the hundredth time, I have to ask why movie-makers feel the need to have more than one villain when making a superhero sequel?)

As with the first movie, the big action climax is so stuffed with CG that it starts to feel lifeless. It's better CG than the first film, I'd say, so my fatigue point came later -- but when the fight is literally against an army of robot drones, and your hero is wearing invulnerable armor, it's hard to feel any sense of stakes.

That would probably all average out to a C+ in my book (knocking off points from the first film for the "been there, seen that" nature of the second), but then I have to count one more strike against it. The "required reading" for The Avengers feels far too transparent here. A lot of screen time is devoted to setting up Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, and Samuel Jackson as a Nick Fury who does more than cameo for 40 seconds in other movies. At least one of the two really needed their own movie, in my opinion. (In fact, I feel like the Black Widow movie would have been pretty cool, had they made it. Scarlett Johansson's action scenes are the best action beats in the movie.)

In any case, their collective presence here feels like it's crowding out Tony Stark in this story -- a "hero creep" problem to mirror the "villain creep" problem of superhero sequels. Multi-hero movies can work (such as X-Men: First Class), but I think the movie has to be carefully crafted that way. As The Avengers will be. This movie, trying to serve the "team" master at the same time it's trying to be an Iron Man solo movie, slips in both categories as a result.

So overall, I'd rate Iron Man 2 a C. That puts it squarely in the center of my curve, and in the spectrum of Marvel "prep films" too. Of course, if you believe my friend, you should bump that up to a B to get to what you might think of it.