Iron Man 2 Reviews (Spoilers)

[Crazedwraith]

Just got back from it So i thought I'd throw up a thread.


On the whole, I'm pretty damn pleased with it. Lots more action, lots more suits, a bigger villians. There were three big scenes and the planted lanterns to explain things that bothered me. (Rhodey being able to fly the MkII)

Still rather over complex and while it tried capture the fun feel of the first film (lots of silly 'fun' moments) the more dramatic bits felt out of place so the whole film feels like it was trying just a little too hard in places.

Still a great ride.

[The Romulan Republic]

Where exactly is Iron Man 2 out yet?

[Crazedwraith]

*points at the location tag* Idiot.

It did say it was special preview airing on the cinema's website though. Check It

[The Romulan Republic]

*points at the location tag* Idiot.

It did say it was special preview airing on the cinema's website though. Check It

And how was I supposed to know that from your post?

Anyway, it looks pretty good from the teasers, and so far I haven't seen any negative reviews, so hopefully you're right and its good. It's still more than a week, I think, until it comes out here though.

[Crazedwraith]

*points at the location tag* Idiot.

It did say it was special preview airing on the cinema's website though. Check It

And how was I supposed to know that from your post?

I'm sorry, I didn't realise our rules of evidence actually applied to films that we've seen. So Fuck you, and fuck your passive little accusations about piracy, you piece of shit.


I can't say its a perfect film. It's certainly not a slick and polished as the first one, owing to it try and incorporate a whole lot more elements into the package.

Frankly Jackson's Nick Fury is a bit wasted, as is Scarlett Johansen's Black Widow. In fact, the sup-plot in which Tony is dying and has to build a new triangular reactor to power the armour could easily have be cut. (The palonium core from the first film being poisonous!) THe time could have instead have been used to develop Rhodey and War Machine more. (They do manage to work in a War Machine reference similar to the Iron Monger in the first film. THe up gunned mark II is also referred to as the same acronym as the original comic book armour.)

It's still quite slick and veyr fun to watch, Especially towards the end when massive amounts of powered drone turn up to try and ruin Iron Man's shit only to have him wipe them the fuck out.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm sorry, I didn't realise our rules of evidence actually applied to films that we've seen. So Fuck you, and fuck your passive little accusations about piracy, you piece of shit.

I do not wish to further derail this thread, and I hope a mod will split this little tangent, but since you're insisting on making a big deal out of an off-hand remark, let me clarify: I was not in any way trying to suggest that you were guilty of piracy and I'm sorry if you took it that way. That said, as far as I am concerned the only one who has any real reason to feel insulted here is me. But I'll let it go if you do.

[Crazedwraith]

Ah hell, I PMed this but I should say it publicly really. I am sorry, I took that initial remarked the wrong way and Over reacted. My apologies to The Romulan Republic.

If a mod wants to split out this little off topic section, please feel free.

[Faqa]

Just got back from seeing it - not bad at all, though not written as well as the original. Nevertheless, the formula of just turning Downey loose on the set for a few hours worked fairly well.

Good points:

+ The attempt to make a character-focused plot.
+ Transformation sequence for Iron Man! My inner Power Ranger fan squeed
+ The action scenes were scant, but impressive.
+ Stark and Rhodes duking it out to "Another One Bites The Dust"!
+ Tony on Scarlett Johansson's character: "I want one". Simply and hilariously put.
+ Sam Rockwell hamming it up as, well, the Hammer CEO.
+ "If you use the word 'I' again, *I* will throw something at your head" - Hee!

Bad points:

- Uh.... Nick Fury shows up to infodump and leaves. That was.... unnecessary.
- Scarlett Johansson... either she can't act or she wasn't trying to here, because she fumbled every line she was given.
- The plot was a mess that could have lost half an hour without much harm. As I said, the character focus was good, but the whole "Evil Russian Builds Robots To Kill Stark" thing was just dumb.
- The whole thing with Tony's father was a cynical attempt to yank at the heartstrings that ALSO did not work.



In short, not as good as the original, not a very well-constructed movie, but all it really had to do was put Downey in front of the camera a lot and leave room for impressive CGI fights, and it did both.

[Cykeisme]

There are a couple of things that struck me on first viewing..
Spoiler

First, the whole thing about Howard Stark hiding a "new element" in the goddamn shape of a globe on a model was sorta dumb.. and then the entire sequence where Tony synthesizes the new element with garage apparatus (even billionaire genius garage apparatus) blew my suspension of disbelief right out of the water. Yes, comic book movie, blah blah blah.. but the first movie stretched SoD to an extent or direction that was awesome. This was just a little too far.. who were the science advisors on the movie?

Secondly, the Tony/Pepper dynamic was actually much better in the first movie.

BUT it is a bloody excellent film overall.

Also, DO NOT LEAVE THE THEATRE TILL THE CREDITS HAVE ROLLED.. Spoiler

Mjol-fucking-nir!

[Crazedwraith]

Faqa has managed to say what my overexcited brain couldn't plonk down coherently. Another very minor disappointment, was the opening scene; over the company symbols and the start they replayed the audio from the last scene of Iron Man 1, but they didn't whip out the Black Sabbath riff after the 'I am Iron Man' line. Or use it at all.

[GuppyShark]

If we want to poke holes in the science of Iron Man we'll be here for a while....

I was more annoyed that he was doing the manual labour himself. Isn't that what staff/robots are for? Loved the use of a certain shield in that scene!

I also enjoyed Rhodes' first scene and his conversation with Stark. "It's me, deal with it!"

[Old Plympto]

I'm glad Happy got more to do. Sure he's the director, but it's Happy Hogan, dude. He's got to do more than what he did in the first movie.

Also, John Slattery as Howard Stark is full of win, in his brief appearance.

Also, I geeked out at Black Widow's little SHIELD insignia on her costume.

General thoughts: I thought I had the whole thing figured out from the trailers. I did, maybe 70% of it, but the amount of detail they fit into the storyline was just fantastic. Mickey Rourke looked like he could tear a man apart by sneering at him. I think Nick Fury is still being held back as the infodump guy until Captain America. That's where I think they'll unleash him. The Hammer drone presentation was pretty awesome as well, seeing all those mecha and their equipment differences between the military branches.

[Admiral Valdemar]

THOR!

More to follow, but I found it suitably (haha, see what I did there?) fun.

[Jade Owl]

I was OK. Not as good as the first one, but not much of a disappointment.

I was pleasantly surprised by Scarlett Johansson’s performance. I thought she did a good job differentiating between “Natalie” and her regular persona. I loved the way fact that she obviously couldn’t stand Tony. Every time she dropped the act you could see the barely contained annoyance at having to put up with his antics.

And speaking of the Black Widow, I think whoever it was that was in charge of the fight choreography in this movie deserves compliments. The fighting style they came up with for Scarlett really suits the fact that she’s a rather small woman. It came out very well, and a hell of a lot more believable that I expected. The fact that she incorporated a lot of dirty tricks and trinkets into it was a very nice touch as well.

Now, regarding the after credits scene, I’ll admit that when Agent Coulson said that he was leaving for New Mexico, I really expected something related to the Hulk or aliens. I really should’ve guessed it would be Mjolnir. Does this mean that Coulson will be in the Thor movie?

[Gandalf]

There's one thing that kept bugging me; Tony needs a power source equal to or greater than a car battery to keep himself alive. Why keep the palladium reactor in there if it's killing him? Couldn't he have a battery in there as opposed to a generator?

Also, how did Rhodey learn to use that suit?

Overall it was pretty fun.

[Srelex]

It was solid, but I felt they defeated Vanko a bit too easily.

[Shroom Man 777]

I liked it. The only minor detraction was that they DID do a whole LOT of stuff the movie was pretty good, but storywise not as concise and tight as the first one. You had SHIELD doing shit, you had Tony having to find his heart, his dad's legacy, Angry Evil Russian, and slimey Exec, Nick Fury talking too much (I mean, eh? Meh), Tony STRAK dealing with his personal issues, Rhodes popping up here and there to chastise STRAK for fucking up, some stuff with Pepper Potts though I think the first movie's interplay between them two was way better and now it got pushed aside (along with character interactions) for "more" stuff, and basically it seemed to have a whole lot of features whereas the first one was direct to the point and involved fewer but more focused storylines and fewer but more developed characters and fewer but more concentrated divergent plot points. I mean, what the hell was up with Tony's daddy making his City of the Future mockup a hidden blueprint for some new element that would make the original Arc Reactor obsolete - the whole hidden secret stuff was, like, segueing into National Treasure/Da Vinci code territory?

Nonetheless, Ironmang 2 it pulled it off entertainingly and pretty well, and man, he built a fucking particle accelerator in his goddamn basement! Not with a box of scraps though, but with mail ordered nuclear technology! But still, the movie dealt with a lot of stuff in a not-bullshit manner, and while again I think the movie had a lot of stuff in it, the actors' acting was nonetheless good and Downey is fun to watch as usual, and the super robot fight was totally cool. Vanko was a pretty good villain, though I don't get how they tried to portray him as having a legitimate grievance with STRAK but then it turns out - oooh, Strak's daddy is a goody-two-shoes and Vanko's pappy was the prick who, gasp, did things "for money!" and thus got deported to a fucking Siberian gulag. I think after Daddy Vanko helped Howard Stark build the Arc reactor, Stark just deported the guy to Russia so he wouldn't have to pay the damn dirty Russian. Whiplash was a good villain, Rourke did a good job there, though I think they could've done a little bit *more* with the character - he was, after all, within Stark's intellectual caliber and he did build his own fucking Whiplash thinggy in a basement with a box of scraps. Except I think his Whiplash thinggy was less shit than the Mk. I Ironmang suit.

Basically, that's it. Good, fun movie with great effects, decent non-shit storyline, and good acting on part of a pretty nice cast. Only gripe is that they shoehorned a lot of crap, thus diminishing the character interactions that made Iron Mang 1 so fun, so we get to see less of Stark and Pepper and Rhodes is just an occasional appearance or two when action scenes are not called for - and this Rhodes apparently spent too much time riding the Hum-Drum-Vee.

Also, I was not impressed with Warmachine's firepower. The other Hammeroid bots have shitloads of missiles and shit, and what does this guy have? A fucking FN F2000, an SMG, and a bunch of other small-arms bolted on plus a generic action movie minigun? LAME. The minigun wasn't bad, but those other stuff were just a bunch of bog standard whatevers. Eh. And a wrist-mounted F2000 is apparently enough to tear a Hammeroid to pieces? Eh? Well, whatever. I guess Hammer didn't use the specific awesome armor composition of Stark, and those things WERE just prototypes and WERE fabricated before Hammer acquired the Warmachine suit. Sure, why not.

[Koolaidkirby]

I liked the movie overall, liked a lot of the little things like the interplay between black widow and Starks bodyguard (cant remember his name), I felt they should have spent a little bit more developing Whiplash's character, but I really liked the evil CEO guy and how Sam Rockwell played him. I didn't find it particularly problematic when Stark built a particle accelerator in hes basement (Hes Tony stark! he made a apple sized power plant in a cave with a box of scraps!).

I'm bugged I didn't stay till after the credits, anyone care to fill me in?

[Shroom Man 777]

It's useless fanservice "tie in" to the rest of the Marvel Universe (yawn), when that dorky SHIELD operative goes to New Mexico and there's a excavation and in the middle of the site, unearthed from the ground, is a hammer. *cue thunder, cut, end movie*

I don't really care much for how they're tying the flick in with this Avengers poo-poo, and I also didn't give a crap about Samuel L. Fury going on about how there's a whole (Marvel) "universe" (lol) out there that he's busy policing and shit. Yeah, yeah, I know Mr. Samuel L. Fury there's a marvel universe out there and you're out punching skrulls in the ovaries and shit, and I don't give a crap because that stuff doesn't matter shit in the Iron Mang 2 movie and is totally useless and might as well be cut the only useful thing SHIELD gave us was Black Widow getting naked while the movie's director is driving the car and shit.

oh but i guess it wasnt so bad and appeased fatty nerds and shit lol am i rite strakstrakstrak

[Gandalf]

It was solid, but I felt they defeated Vanko a bit too easily.

I liked that he was quite weak, and that he wasn't too much trouble for Iron Man to beat. His primary role in the film is to shit Tony Stark.

Instead of one big villain, there were lots of minor annoyances. It's a refreshing change, especially considering that in the previous film we had to sit through Iron Man versus Iron Lebowski.

[Sinewmire]

I don't really care much for how they're tying the flick in with this Avengers poo-poo, and I also didn't give a crap about Samuel L. Fury going on about how there's a whole (Marvel) "universe" (lol) out there that he's busy policing and shit. Yeah, yeah, I know Mr. Samuel L. Fury there's a marvel universe out there and you're out punching skrulls in the ovaries and shit, and I don't give a crap because that stuff doesn't matter shit in the Iron Mang 2 movie and is totally useless and might as well be cut the only useful thing SHIELD gave us was Black Widow getting naked while the movie's director is driving the car and shit

Same here, tbh. I find it hard to take Marvel's Thor seriously in the 21st Century, and I liked batman for flux's sake. Once somebody explained to me what the hammer represented I laughed out loud. Thor? Really? Really?

[Lost Soal]

Bringing Justin Hammer in to weaponise the suit was pointless. Besides his dud rocket, which you knew would do notion, he gave them nothing that they couldn't have pulled from their own armouries.

Otherwise I really liked it.

[Sinewmire]

Bringing Justin Hammer in to weaponise the suit was pointless.

Very true. I also hate the word weaponise.

[Crazedwraith]

Bringing Justin Hammer in to weaponise the suit was pointless. Besides his dud rocket, which you knew would do notion, he gave them nothing that they couldn't have pulled from their own armouries.

Plus the 'software update' which as soon as you heard you just knew the plot was going to involve War Machine being taken over or otherwise sabotaged.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Same here, tbh. I find it hard to take Marvel's Thor seriously in the 21st Century, and I liked batman for flux's sake. Once somebody explained to me what the hammer represented I laughed out loud. Thor? Really? Really?

It would be nice if they kept this stuff separate. The cameo by Stark at the end of The Incredible Hulk was one thing, with him commenting on Gen. Ross' failed bio-weapon programme, but it's another to bring in an actual Norse god.