SPOILER ALERT: Iron Man 2 review

In case the title didn't make it clear, this is NOT a spoiler-free review so if that concerns you, come back after you've seen the movie.

Are we good? Okay.

So I just saw Iron Man 2. I've been reading the original Iron Man comics and watching several superhero movies (especially Marvel) to get a sense of the Iron Man character and how the superhero genre translates into film.

It seems to me that the superhero genre is all about the beginning, not the end. The origin (or "premise") sets the character's defining elements and then the creators find as many different ways of looking at that premise as possible. However, unlike a traditional self-contained story, the superhero story isn't going anywhere. That is to say, unlike Luke Skywalker who had a character arc where he develops into a Jedi and defeats the empire, superhero stories don't have a natural place for the story to end. Due to the way they are marketed, it actually becomes important that the story has no end. This is the difference between a serial story and a contained story.

All of this is to say that the first movie in a franchise is most likely to be the best. The story focuses on the most crucial character development, going from a guy to a hero. This was the storyarc of the first film as we saw the arrogant and self-absorbed Tony Stark abducted by terrorists. From this experience, he questions his life and changes his ways.

In Iron Man 2, Tony is still arrogant and flighty and irresponsible. Granted, that's how we like him, but his self-destructive streak goes to far and he just becomes obnoxious for the majority of the film. This culminates in Tony's birthday party where he is unbelievably drunk and hanging out in his armor to impress his shallow "friends." Pepper and Rhodie arrive and are apparently the only ones concerned for him. Pepper tries to talk him into ending the party, but fails so Rhodie puts on a Iron Man suit and solves things with a fist fight.

When this scene started, it was hard for me to tell who was being stupider - Stark or Rhodes. At least Stark was drunk and just showing off. Rhodie was stone-cold sober and intending to get in a fight with a high tech battle suit... at a busy party... with a drunk guy in another battle suit. It was just dumb and macho.

Hmmm... what else... Black Widow was kind of disappointing. She didn't even have a Russian accent! Half the fun of having a Russian spy is the accent! I understand she was undercover as an American, but I expected her to slip into Chekov-speak after her cover was blown. I was also hoping for some sort of connection between her and Whiplash. I think that would have helped her motivation. I also wanted to see her versus Iron Man. I would have liked to see at least one fight before she helped the good guys. She did start off as a villain, after all.

Speaking of which, "robot battle suits versus robot battle suits" is getting a little old already. I know it is only the second movie, but it is getting a little familiar. I liked that Whiplash didn't have armor, but then at the end, he has armor so...

But the "Wha- huh?" moment of the film was the end where Tony Stark finally wants to be in the Avengers Initiative when Nick Fury rejects him by saying, "Iron Man is approved, but Tony Stark isn't."

So... are you saying Robert Downey Jr. won't be in the Avengers? Will Don Cheadle be in the Iron Man armor? Is it a contract negotiation thing and you are trying to save on budget? Or is this some sort of tease?

Well, if Robert Downey Jr. isn't going to be in the Avengers, I'm pretty disappointed on a few levels. Mostly, when I think about an Avengers movie, it isn't that I want to see all the superpowers together, I want to see the characters together. If this movie is about Steve Rogers and Thor meeting... Col. James Rhodes, it won't be nearly as much fun. Steve Rogers is an old-fashioned guy from a more classical time. Thor even more so. They contrast well with Stark who is so uniquely contemporary and possessing dubious morality.

All of that aside, I enjoyed the film, but I agree with all of the reviews I've seen that say it doesn't hold up to the original. The action is pretty uneven with a lot of mediocre and kind of tedious character stuff at the beginning and most of the fighting happening in the last half-hour. There is a completely gratuitous cameo appearance by Captain America's shield that is played as a cheap joke which will only get cheaper with time. And if you stay after the credits, you will get to see Thor's hammer, Mjolnir.

Getting to my point in a round about way, the second movie is always going to be harder than the first, and if I can tolerate some godawful comic books, I can tolerate a somewhat uneven action film. I just hope the next one offers something a bit new. Mandarin might be a hard villain to make work (because he uses magic and is little more than a racist stereotype), but Iron Monger and Whiplash aren't exactly A-list villains. I would say that the next Iron Man movie needs a bit more to it in order to keep this franchise alive.