Iron Man 2

Wow. I do not get how the advance buzz was so bad. This is a great, great, great film.

What's really impressive is that Iron Man 2 manages to make all of the mistakes that superhero movie sequels almost always make (multiple villains, tossing in a bunch of new characters, a lame crisis of faith subplot for the hero, etc.), but it doesn't matter! The movie pulls it off! Even the stuff that annoyed me was quickly forgotten.

In the past year, it's been announced that the Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and X-Men franchises are all getting rebooted, despite still being relatively fresh. It'll be a long time before Marvel will be able to do the same with Iron Man once Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. finish up, because there's just no way they'll be able to improve on this.

Spoilers follow...

The Good:

-- Robert Downey Jr. The novelty of his performance in the first film has sort of worn off, but he's still a lot of fun to watch. Being a DC guy in general, and a Batman guy in particular, I (slightly) prefer the current Batman films to the Iron Man franchise, but at no point have I ever gotten the sense that Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan are having anywhere near as much fun as Downey Jr. and Favreau are.

-- Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell. In superhero film franchises, villains generally get worse, not better. But with Jeff Bridges's character by far the weakest part of Iron Man, I guess there was nowhere to go but up. I especially liked that both Ivan Vanko and Justin Hammer are sympathetic in their own way. Vanko wants to avenge his dad, and Hammer just wants to prove he's smarter than the smartest guy in the room. And maybe get laid. Who can't relate to that?

-- The Black Widow. I'm still not sure how Hollywood managed to fuck up an Elektra movie, but I hope that doesn't scare Marvel off from doing another spin-off featuring a female character.

-- The Avengers set-up. I thought the credit cookie was a bit of a letdown, but Nick Fury and a lot of other stuff I missed, make me glad this is going full speed ahead. I'm especially pleased they haven't forgotten about the Hulk, since I guess there's a question as to whether or not Ed Norton is still on board.

-- Shit blowing up. Shit blows up! Lots of it! Especially at the end! Strong writing and acting are important elements of any superhero film, but you just can't overstate enough the importance of shit blowing up.

The Bad:

-- The mask. I don't get why whenever there's a superhero movie sequel where the character wears a mask--Batman Returns, Spider-Man 2, and now this--the star apparently decides that his face wasn't featured enough in the first film, and so his character's mask has to come off every five minutes. If it were me, I'd just enjoy the day off as my stuntman ran around in the uncomfortable superhero costume.

-- Don Cheadle. Don't get me wrong, Cheadle is one of those actors who I'd watch read the phone book. Channel surfing last week, I was surprised to discover he was in Hotel For Dogs, and actually watched the last 15 minutes of that terrible film just because he was in it. And it's not like he did a lousy job here or anything. But they really should have brought Terrance Howard back.

-- The Iron Man case. So usually, it takes this lengthy, involved process and a couple of gigantic robotic arms to put on or take off the Iron Man suit, but Tony's figured out a way to shrink the whole thing down to the size of a briefcase? Why not just have Tony figure out how to defeat Vanko at the race track without Iron Man?

-- The requisite Stan Lee cameo. Does he really have to pop up in every single Marvel-based film? I know this is probably a contractually obligated thing to keep him from suing Marvel again, but the bit's gotten stale.

The Ugly

-- Lazy plot holes. Why did Tony and Pepper seemingly forget they were romantically involved at the end of the last film? How did Vanko know Tony would be driving the race car when no one else did? How did Tony know the exact spot where Pepper was in order to save her at the end? If you're a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent undercover as a paralegal, do you really show off your preternatural martial arts skills? Why would Tony's father hide his "You're my greatest invention" line in a film strip of outtakes Tony would probably never see, or hide the secret of this amazing new element in a diorama?

I'm willing to turn my brain off to a certain degree, but not this much.

-- Drunk Iron Man. I know this sort of came from the comics, but the way it was executed in the birthday party scene reminded me too much of Peter Parker strutting down the street in Spider-Man 3.