Iron Man 2
May 16th, 2010 by PotatoJust a quick note: there will be minor spoilers all through this.
I was trying to think of how to review Iron Man 2 when Orson Scott Card beat me to it.
It was a pretty movie that was fun to watch. But there were a lot of holes in it, especially with the characters and their motivations.
For Tony, he went through this whole nonsense of discovering a new element to upgrade his arc reactor to get around a problem with heavy metal poisoning. Supposedly, his use of the Iron Man suit exacerbated the leeching of toxins into his body. However, this made no sense to me, since he obviously managed to make power suits with their own power supply (such as the one Rhodie took), and only needed the power from a car battery to power the electromagnet in his chest. He easily could have externalized the arc reactor and used a conventional battery to keep him from dying.
I also didn’t like Don Cheadle as Rhodie, he just played it so straight. And as Tony’s friend, it made no sense to me why he’d steal the armour (even if under orders) just to give Stark’s competitor, Hammer, access to it. In all his interactions he was just such a divergence from what we saw in the first movie, where they skirt that line between professional camaraderie (or even babysitting) and drinking buddy.
I also didn’t think we got a very good look at Vanko — it wasn’t quite as bad as Star Trek for glossing over the villain, but Jebidaiah from the first one was just so much more real and sinister, and we got to see him develop and go power-mad before our eyes…
Anyhow, for all its shortcoming it was action-packed popcorn-munching fun, so go have at it!