Illustration from K.C. Byrde's Our Flags and Their Significance, 1920
I'm starting to think that what I'm looking for in a good superhero movie is not what other people are looking for. After reading lukewarm reviews of Iron Man 2 and hearing some less-than-stellar feedback from friends, I thought the movie would turn out to have some pretty major flaws. And yet I find myself with few negative things to say about the movie. Which is why I think I might be doing it wrong.
Iron Man 2 has a first-rate cast, and the big-name stars involved are playing off their existing personae and past work in interesting ways. It has an interesting protagonist/antagonist dynamic, with Robert Downey Jr's head-case Tony Stark being counterbalanced with two "incomplete" villains, the nerd's-revenge-gone-wrong CEO, Justin Hammer, who has little real malevolence but plenty of resources (played by the always-awesome Sam Rockwell) and the raging, revenge-fueled back-alley physicist Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke). It has a script which is excellent at the dialogue level, with many human moments and intimate interactions that you don't find in many of the "action-figure" style superhero movies. The directing and cinematography are quirky and have a lot of personality, which is hard to come by outside of the Batman franchise. The action is not necessarily top-notch, but it's more of a value-add here than in the first Iron Man movie, where the fight scenes seemed tacked-on and phoned-in.
Iron Man 2 overreaches a little, but I admire the ambition in trying to do so much. Justin Theroux's script juggles the too-big cast admirably, but the plot has a couple more twists than it needs, and the big revelation of the secret legacy of Tony Stark's father is the movie's only real groan-inducing moment (although it's great to see Mad Men's Roger Sterling playing a drunk Walt Disney). And there's a feeling that they tried to give every character a chance to shine, which doesn't really work. Happy Hogan's fight scene with a security guard is funny, but it would probably have ended up on the cutting room floor if the character wasn't played by director Jon Favreau, and Agent Coulson of SHIELD is a character that didn't really need to be in this movie at all. Also, the endless stream of cameos gets tiresome after a while.
Overall, though, I think Iron Man 2 is the best "super" movie I've seen since The Dark Knight. While it lacks that movie's grit and edge, relying a little too much on CGI (although you can't really do a street-level, low-tech Iron Man movie), it combines the humanity of Nolan's work with the level of craft found in the mostly soulless Watchmen. But, like I said, I'm not sure that's what people want to see in a superhero movie these days.
"The Magnificent Seven" by the Clash
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