Iron Man 2 Review

[redconfession]

The first time I saw Iron Man 2 was Sunday in the city.  It was an “IMAX” screen, and the crowd was generally nerdy—they got most of the comic book references, judging by the reactions during certain scenes.  I definitely had a good time, but, like many people, I left the theatre thinking that, although enjoyable, it wasn’t as good as the first.

This afternoon I saw it again for the second time.  This time, I loved it.  Every second.  It was like I was watching the movie for the first time.  And—dare I say it—I thought it was better than the first one.

What changed in 4 days?

To be honest, I’m not too sure.  I mean I didn’t go into it thinking “this time I’m going to hope it’s better than the first one!” or lower my expectations or anything.  Actually, I went into the movie a bit more critically than I did the first time.

I think what changed is I read reviews from other people.  I read what people thought of were plot holes and their gripes with the movie itself.  I thought about the movie as I remembered it the first time, and when I went in to see the movie the second time, I was determined to see if what people saw were plotholes were really plotholes or not.  I wanted to figure out what was up with the plot.

Anyway, I think I figured out what the “problem” of the movie is.  In literature, there are two kinds of writing—character driven and plot driven.  Most movies are plot driven.  I’m pretty certain that Iron Man 2 is character driven.

Those of you who have seen the movie, think about it.  The plot doesn’t make sense because it’s not following a straight line.  It’s following the characters.  There’s the Rhodey storyline (trying to make both Stark and the US government happy, while maintaining his good name), the Hammer storyline (trying to keep his weapons contract with the government/show up Tony), the Vanko (?; I’m totally blanking on Whiplash’s last name here) storyline (trying to get revenge on Tony for his father’s death/deportation/shitty life), the SHIELD storyline (is Tony good enough for the Avengers?), and the Tony storyline (Oh shit I’m dying let’s leave a legacy while doing as much stupid shit as humanly possible).  They all intertwine and when two or more storylines interact—you have your scene.  Unless it’s necessary for us to understand the rest of the movie, then they get their own scene (Whiplash in the beginning of the movie/working on the drones).

When I started looking at it from that angle, it all really fit into place and I was able to understand and follow it better.  I was able to see just how well every piece fit together, and that there weren’t any unnecessarily scenes (which I have to admit did not look that way the first go round).  Just like the first movie, everything was carefully crafted.  Probably the only reason that it didn’t work as well was that there wasn’t a clear plot (because it’s character driven) and there was more going on in the film.

The major gripe of the movie seems to be that people felt Howard just “randomly” gave his son the thing he needed to save his life.  He didn’t.  It’s shown at the very beginning that Ivan and Howard worked together on the arc reactor.  Fury later tells Tony that the arc reactor was incomplete, and that they wanted to create an element to generate energy through the arc reactor.  This was to create an energy race, not to do anything for Tony.  However, they were prevented from doing so because the equipment wasn’t available in their time (Howard said as much himself in the video to Tony).  Howard knew that Tony was smarter than he was, and that he would be the one to create the element.  He couldn’t just leave that sort of information laying around (because it would have probably been stolen by Stane if he had), and because he’s as big of a dick as Tony, left it for him in a giant puzzle.  Tony figured out the puzzle and rediscovered the element.  Howard hoped to leave his son an element that he could utilize to create energy, something that was to be housed in the arc reactor he had already created—he just happened to leave him something that would save his life.

As for the whole “this is an Avengers prequel,” thing: think about SHIELD for a minute.  They have their hands in EVERYTHING.  Fury already had his eye on Stark, as seen by the first movie.  He wasn’t going to sit around and watch Tony from afar, especially when realizing such a strong potential Avenger could be dying.  SHIELD intervention was almost necessary.  It would have been odd if SHIELD hadn’t interfered—those motherfuckers interfere in everything else in the comics. It’s good that movie audiences get to see how deeply SHIELD involves themselves in the Marvel Universe.  Yes, there’s a lot of SHIELD in the second half, but the start of the second half is post-Tony meltdown.  They let Tony do what he wanted before that, and only started intervening after they thought they had no other choice.

That said, the movie isn’t perfect; none ever are.  I only have 2 real gripes with the movie, and they’re fairly minor.  The first is Natasha—she’s Russian, right?  Why the hell doesn’t she have a Russian accent?  I mentioned this to my mother (who I saw it with the first time), and she pointed out that Natasha was playing “Natalie Rushman” so she shouldn’t have a Russian accent.  I agreed with that entirely—while playing the role of Natalie, she shouldn’t have the accent.  However, when the jig is up and Tony finds out who she is, she should have had a Russian accent.  There was no reason for her not to at that point.  Also, how awesome would it have been to have Natasha bust out a Russian accent on poor Happy when she tries to get him to take her to Hammer Industries?

The second is the element Tony created in the movie.  I’m pretty sure he “invented” Vibranium.  If that’s the case, what about Black Panther and Wakanda?  Isn’t their whole shtick they have to protect themselves from people who want Vibranium, as it’s the ONLY place you can find it?  Well here comes Tony Stark, who builds it in his basement (WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!).  That would suck for them—it’s not longer just their thing.  Black Panther is awesome, and he needs more respect.  But that’s just more of a personal nitpick than anything.