Slashing The Seats

What better place than the vast temple of Mammon men refer to as London’s Westfield shopping centre to settle in and check out a movie about a billionaire show-off. Make no mistake, Iron Man 2 is all about the bling.

Unfortunately, it isn’t really about anything else.

Where the first movie gave us a former hellraiser as a cocky, likeable..er..hellraiser, here we get to see all the bits we hate about rich guys like that. All the dazzle, all the showing off -in short, all the style over substance…

Back in 2008, Iron Man continued down the path mapped out by the X-Men and Spider-Man movies (We’ll ignore the Fantastic Four for now) and did what fans had been telling studios to do all along; Read the comic and stop trying to change it. There’s a reason these characters have remained popular for 40 years.
Favreau did a great job transferring Tony Stark’s flawed, egotistical super hero to the screen – lack of credible villain aside – Iron Man is a great movie. Unfortunately the director has possibly taken too many notes when watching Sam Raimi’s Spidey flicks, following the rocky route set by Spider-Man 3 and trying to cram way too much of that four-decade long continuity into the 2 hour running time, with borderline disastrous results.

I’m sorry guys, but after all the hype, all the great looking trailers, and all the shots of Scarlett Johanssen’s bottom, this is a massive disappointment.

With large chunks of screen time taken up by the enlarged cast, there’s a lack of focus on Stark himself, often leaving a muddled and confusing mess flashing in front of your eyeballs. While the newly sex-changed Whiplash (seriously -his comic book alter ego was an amazonian lesbian terrorist…) looks great, Mickey Rourke seems to have reverted to default, showing none of the villainous, downbeat charm that worked so well in Spun or The Wrestler, while even the always value for money Sam Rockwell struggles to make an impact as rival industrialist Justin Hammer. It’s not that he doesn’t work hard, but he’s written in such broad strokes that he seems..well…like a comic-book villain.

For Downey Jnr there’s some room to manoeuvre; a subplot about his technology affecting his health could be interesting -although it’s a cowardly get-out when you consider the alcoholism storyline it stems from – but is only alluded to before the focus whips off to check out James Rhodes in his new War Machine armour, or Hammer’s monstrous military models. Stark fails to engage the way he did previously, and is far less likeable because of it.

Sure, there’s plenty of explosions, but the editing and distinct lack of anything approaching characterisation means the whole thing suffers from a huge case of the Transformers halfway through. Yes, it’s cool to watch guys in super-suits blow shit up. What isn’t so cool is that you quickly realise you don’t know who’s in what suit or why they exploding things, and then you stop giving a crap.
It’s just too much. Look at the bad guys;

Hammer -Industrialist. Wants the armour to make money and is a bit jealous of Stark. Fair enough, but it hardly seems like motivation for murdering hundreds of people does it?

Next up, Whiplash. Why does he hate Stark? God knows. And the director isn’t telling. Hell, he isn’t even telling us why Tony Stark is taking part in an F1 race when Whiplash attacks. I guess it just looked cool huh John?

Finally, there’s a senate committee -led by fucking Gary Shandling of all people – who want to steal his secrets as well. Basically, their motivation seems to be that they’re THE GODDAMNED US GOV’MENT BOY! And that’s it.

So; three unbelievable villains, two love interests, One under-developed sub-plot and some guff about War Machine to further confuse matters.

And of course about five minutes of actual footage showing Iron Man, the constant to-ing and fro-ing reducing the Golden Avenger to minor character status.

Seriously, he shows up four times -once at a hideously flag-waving Stark Expo, once for a poorly explained meeting with Nick Fury, and for a couple of battles- one with Whiplash, one mind-and-arse-numbingly extended one alongside War Machine.

To sum up; Marvel had greater creative control, the cast are all strong actors, and Favreau has always produced decent work in the past, so what went wrong remains a mystery, but it’s one that needs to be solved quickly if we’re to hold out hope for Joss Wheedon’s Avengers, or even Iron Man 3. This is all flash and bang, with none of the neat fanboy winks that fleshed out the original.

Strongly in need of a reboot, Iron Man 2 is as confused and disillusioned as its protagonist. With some judicious re-editing and an extended running time there’s hope come director’s cut time, but the suit needs some serious retooling if we’re expected to shell out to see old shell head a third time.

Tweet This!