After almost 23 months of silence (imagine that, almost two years without a Marvel Studios movie. Crazy, huh?), Marvel continued to expand its growing universe with the release of Iron Man 2 in early May, 2010. The sequel reunited many of the main players behind the first film while still making some fairly significant changes. Between the release of the first film and the filming of the second, Terrence Howard abruptly quit. This forced Marvel Studios and Jon Favreau to recast Rhodey with another extremely seasoned actor: Don Cheadle. This move alone was very controversial, and immediately cast a shadow over the production.
Other notable changes were made to the staff: music composer Ramin Djawadi was replaced by the extremely generic John Debney, and comedic actor Justin Theroux replaced all four writers of the first film. These changes are undoubtedly felt throughout the film, but those weren't the only issues. This time around, Marvel was far more adamant in building up to their recently confirmed crossover: The Avengers. That meant that SHIELD had to play a much larger role in this story, and they also wanted to lay down more hints of what was to come. This meant that not only did Iron Man 2 have to serve as a set-up for the next few MCU films, it also had to be a natural follow-up to the first film. The result? A bit of a mess.
But you know what? I still like the movie. While it doesn't recapture what made the first film work on such a deep level, it still gets enough right to be a mostly worthy sequel. It shows plenty of the MCU's growing pains, but it's still elevated by strong performances, some solid stories, and much more exciting action. So, it's time to put up a shield of my own and defend this often berated installment.
One of the first things I want to point out is that, yes, this movie does waste a fair amount of potential. Jon Favreau originally wanted to pursue a truer adaptation of the famous "Demon in a Bottle" storyline where Tony battled his alcoholism all while the government and Justin Hammer tried to get their hands on the Iron Man technology. Many of those elements are still present here, and those are easily the best parts of the film. In this film, Tony's primary concern isn't taking responsibility, it's about leaving behind a legacy he can be proud of all while being haunted by his father's. This hook is what makes Ivan Vanko/Whiplash such an interesting villain that the film unfortunately wastes.
Like Robert Downey Jr., Marvel and Jon Favreau pursued another '80s heartthrob who fell on hard times with drugs and prison time to enhance the idea that he is Tony Stark's parallel: Mickey Rourke. This inspired casting works most of the time: Rourke gives Vanko a lot of interesting quirks (the tattoos, the love for his bird, and his slips into speaking Russian) that gives him a memorable presence. The first scene we see of Ivan Vanko involves him mourning the loss of his father, immediately giving him a sympathetic side we didn't really see from either Obadiah Stane or Emil Blonsky. By introducing Vanko like this, this gave his drive to destroy Tony Stark some dimension. The movie does backpedal by making Ivan Vanko an illegal arms-dealer, but I really enjoyed the reasoning behind his mission.
The movie doesn't do nearly enough with Vanko however. He is gone for huge chunks of the film when he would have been better served in a storyline that paralleled Tony's. After Vanko "proves God can bleed", his role in the story is suddenly reduced dramatically to make room for one subplot after another before we can get to the big climactic finale. Then, in the big climactic finale, Ivan Vanko's story is unceremoniously ended in a death scene that isn't even shown on screen after a sudden introduction of his own suit. In fact, I'm going to list all of the various plots going on in this film:
-Tony is dying from palladium poisoning and uses the Stark Expo as a means to bring scientists together to push humanity's scientific understanding forward before he dies, and also plans out his legacy, including making Pepper Potts CEO of Stark Industries.
-Tony is targeted by Ivan Vanko, son of Howard Stark's disgraced Soviet partner Anton Vanko.
-Rival arms dealer Justin Hammer works with the US government to try to take away Tony's suits. Justin later teams up with Ivan to take down Tony together.
-SHIELD sends Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, as a sleeper agent to see if Tony is fit for joining the Avengers (easily the weakest and most pointless story).
-Rhodey finally gets sick of Tony's bullcrap and "steals" one of his suits, which is modified to become War Machine by Hammer.
-Tony copes with the shadow of his father's legacy, which actually has the secret to saving Tony's life.
There are so many moving parts in this film that it's easy to see why this is considered one of the weakest MCU films, and I can safely say it is the weakest of the Iron Man trilogy. But damn it, here's the thing: many of these stories DO work. I feel that if you could cut out the lead up to The Avengers and honestly, maybe even War Machine's introduction, you could have a sequel more fans would look back on fondly. Hell, even the stories that could be cut out still work individually thanks to strong acting, more confident direction, and writing that still hits all the right comedic and dramatic beats. Several scenes that shouldn't work, like Tony's long-winded and convoluted rediscovery of the element his father discovered, are pulled off because of Downey's performance, engaging visuals, and a screenplay that tries its damnedest to make it digestible by its audience. So as pieces, these stories work. But they do not equal a complete whole, at least not one as satisfying as Iron Man.
However, what lifts Iron Man 2 over similarly busy superhero sequels like The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, and X-Men: The Last Stand is that each individual story works on its own in this film. Like I said earlier, the rivalry between Tony and Ivan is interesting if underexplored. One of the best scenes in the film is watching Tony self-destruct at his birthday party, leading to a heated confrontation between Tony and Rhodey. Samuel L. Jackson is extremely entertaining as Nick Fury, and I believe this was the film that really made audiences fall in love with Clark Gregg's Agent Phil Coulson. And of course Sam Rockwell is delightfully douchey as Justin Hammer in one of the most face-punch worthy performances (in the best way) of the entire MCU.
Another one of the elements that lifts this film is that it didn't forget one of the first film's greatest strengths: its humor. This time around, the script was being rewritten on an almost daily basis, making it more integral for Favreau to encourage improvisation from his actors. This gives us some of the film's best tiny moments (Tony messing with Pepper's desk knick-knack) which only further humanizes the story. A weaker director would have cut these moments out for stopping the story dead, but they add so much character and prove that even in a film being meddled with by greedy executives, Marvel Studios has the right creative minds to know which moments are worth keeping. Basically, what I'm trying to say is this Hollywood influenced sequel still has tons of heart thanks to the talent in front of and behind the camera.
This movie also improves on Iron Man in a couple of key areas. The action sequences are dramatically improved, especially the thrilling chase sequence through Stark Expo (I like to giveof credit on this to Genndy Tartakovsky, the celebrated creator of Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack, who storyboarded the action scenes in this film). Rhodey is given a lot more to do in this film, and I honestly believe Don Cheadle is an improvement over Terrence Howard because he has better timing with humor, and just generally seems to be having more fun. Finally, Gwyneth Paltrow holds her own against Robert Downey Jr. much better here, and convincingly wins quite a few scenes they share.
The problem is this is a film that wanted to have it all, and I guess they thought they could have it all because the first film was such a major runaway success. This film was extremely successful too (it made only $6 million less than Iron Man domestically, which is a fantastic holdover, but it also made way more money overseas), but this movie turned into a major lesson for Marvel. After how poorly production proceeded, Favreau gave up directing Iron Man 3 and has frequently spoken quite negatively about this film (his next film, Chef, was therapy for how he was treated during production of Iron Man 2). It was the first time the heads at Marvel would have creative difficulties with one of their directors, and showed cracks in the foundation that have come up again and again.
However, Iron Man 2 had enough goodwill and praise to keep momentum going despite its flaws. Marvel would take another year off before returning with two more films produced simultaneously. The next film would be Marvel's riskiest prospect yet: they were about to expand their universe in big ways. Literally.
Next time: Thor
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