There is a lot of space between The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2 in terms of quality. If nothing else, Iron Man 2 gave us more Tony and Pepper and introduced us to Black Widow, and it almost gets a pass on those grounds alone. The movie isn't really unpleasant, but I do still have problems with it. My biggest problem is that I, trivia-minded and obsessive over Marvel-related pop-culture details as I am, regularly forget what even happens in this movie.
I mean, there's some kind of world's fair, Guy from Galaxy Quest teams up with the Russian version of Obadiah Stane, Scarlett Johansen beats up the film's director, and after the end credits Phil finds Thor's hammer. Literally the end credits scene is one of the most memorable scenes of this entire movie. And if I, of all people, can't remember what goes on in this movie, you can bet all the diamonds in Jupiter that most people remember even less, assuming they remember this movie exists at all.
So why is that? Well, I'm glad you asked, because analyzing why fiction works or doesn't is one of my favorite pastimes! So let's engage in some off-the-cuff analysis, shall we?
Right off the bat, there are problems. The first is the villain. Villains. Uh... is Hammer a bad guy, or just really dumb? I mean, he does some illegal things, but is he villainous, or just stupid? It's actually kinda hard to tell, so we'll just pretend he's a tool (baha) for our actual villain,
...
Uh... Russian bird-guy. Dude has a name, probably. I'm not gonna look it up.
The problem with this guy is that he isn't consistent. Is he committed to his revenge? Well, for about half the movie. Then he's convinced he's got his revenge, that Tony is going to die after having the Iron Man taken away from him, and then the prison break happens, and he... becomes an R&D engineer? Who's more concerned with a bird we barely see him interact with than he is with Iron Man? Until suddenly the movie wants us to think it's all about his revenge again, because we have to have another showdown with Iron Monger.
I never know what the guy really wants, and that makes it difficult to understand where he's coming from. So a forgettable villain who's name I can't remember? Check.
Another problem! Tony's character arc. It mirror's his arc from the first movie so closely that, well, it kinda blends in with the first movie. Tony, coming straight off a major climactic moment in his life, is faced with the prospect of his own mortality, comes to understand an important relationship from his past, is saved by the somewhat prescient actions of the person said relationship is with, and then takes responsibility for once just in time to suit up and save the day from a bad guy birthed by his own hubris. Replace Pepper with his dad and Stane with Bird-guy and Tony basically takes the exact same journey as he, uh, already did.
Maybe this is commentary on how Tony is kinda dumb, even though he's really smart? That seems like giving this movie too much credit, but even if that is the case, the movie felt really familiar and is less entertaining as a result.
There are other little issues scattered throughout. The dialogue doesn't feel as natural as the first. Tony spends the entire movie acting like we're going to forget his attitude during the first half of the last movie. The soundtrack the studio released for the film is basically just an AC/DC album. Tony invents a new element in his basement by... pointing a laser at a box. A laser he somehow needed a particle accelerator to make. Was that actually a particle stream? Could be, but he emptied that accelerator out long before he ever hit that box with it. All the near-speed-of-light stuff in that stream that wasn't actually light slammed into his wall within milliseconds of him starting to twist that prism.
Also, building a particle accelerator in your basement... Do you guys have any idea how long the loop for the Large Hadron Collider is?
Anywho, the larger point is that whatever the virtues of Iron Man 2, the final package is, at best, a pile of sorta-close-proximity pebbles cemented together with wet sand. Poke it a few times, and it starts to droop. Drop the excellence of the first Iron Man on it, and it collapses completely. It doesn't really deserve anything more than a footnote in the MCU, and fortunately that's exactly what it is, aside from Pepper being CEO and the sudden transformation of Terrance Howard into Don Cheadle (which is a change I like, but it's not like Iron Man 2 explains it in any way).
So you can skip Iron Man 2. You probably won't want to gouge your eyes out if you don't, but you won't miss anything if you do, and since there are bigger, better things ahead, you may as well just not waste your time.
So why is that? Well, I'm glad you asked, because analyzing why fiction works or doesn't is one of my favorite pastimes! So let's engage in some off-the-cuff analysis, shall we?
Right off the bat, there are problems. The first is the villain. Villains. Uh... is Hammer a bad guy, or just really dumb? I mean, he does some illegal things, but is he villainous, or just stupid? It's actually kinda hard to tell, so we'll just pretend he's a tool (baha) for our actual villain,
...
Uh... Russian bird-guy. Dude has a name, probably. I'm not gonna look it up.
The problem with this guy is that he isn't consistent. Is he committed to his revenge? Well, for about half the movie. Then he's convinced he's got his revenge, that Tony is going to die after having the Iron Man taken away from him, and then the prison break happens, and he... becomes an R&D engineer? Who's more concerned with a bird we barely see him interact with than he is with Iron Man? Until suddenly the movie wants us to think it's all about his revenge again, because we have to have another showdown with Iron Monger.
I never know what the guy really wants, and that makes it difficult to understand where he's coming from. So a forgettable villain who's name I can't remember? Check.
Another problem! Tony's character arc. It mirror's his arc from the first movie so closely that, well, it kinda blends in with the first movie. Tony, coming straight off a major climactic moment in his life, is faced with the prospect of his own mortality, comes to understand an important relationship from his past, is saved by the somewhat prescient actions of the person said relationship is with, and then takes responsibility for once just in time to suit up and save the day from a bad guy birthed by his own hubris. Replace Pepper with his dad and Stane with Bird-guy and Tony basically takes the exact same journey as he, uh, already did.
Maybe this is commentary on how Tony is kinda dumb, even though he's really smart? That seems like giving this movie too much credit, but even if that is the case, the movie felt really familiar and is less entertaining as a result.
There are other little issues scattered throughout. The dialogue doesn't feel as natural as the first. Tony spends the entire movie acting like we're going to forget his attitude during the first half of the last movie. The soundtrack the studio released for the film is basically just an AC/DC album. Tony invents a new element in his basement by... pointing a laser at a box. A laser he somehow needed a particle accelerator to make. Was that actually a particle stream? Could be, but he emptied that accelerator out long before he ever hit that box with it. All the near-speed-of-light stuff in that stream that wasn't actually light slammed into his wall within milliseconds of him starting to twist that prism.
Also, building a particle accelerator in your basement... Do you guys have any idea how long the loop for the Large Hadron Collider is?
Anywho, the larger point is that whatever the virtues of Iron Man 2, the final package is, at best, a pile of sorta-close-proximity pebbles cemented together with wet sand. Poke it a few times, and it starts to droop. Drop the excellence of the first Iron Man on it, and it collapses completely. It doesn't really deserve anything more than a footnote in the MCU, and fortunately that's exactly what it is, aside from Pepper being CEO and the sudden transformation of Terrance Howard into Don Cheadle (which is a change I like, but it's not like Iron Man 2 explains it in any way).
So you can skip Iron Man 2. You probably won't want to gouge your eyes out if you don't, but you won't miss anything if you do, and since there are bigger, better things ahead, you may as well just not waste your time.
Comments
Post a Comment