REVIEW: Iron Man 2

If I had to come up with one word to describe one of the most anticipated film of 2010 it would have to be disappointing. While it does improve on the original's lack of action it's still not enough of actual Iron Man fighting villains. We see Iron Man taking on droids which gave me flashbacks of those awful clone-droid battles from the horrible Star Wars prequels. While they really did bump-up the casting with Cheadle, Johansson, Rourke and Rockwell they don't nearly get enough screentime. While director Jon Favreau's Happy Hogan eats up way too much of other actors' valuable character development. I enjoyed Clark Gregg's scenes in the original but this time he was shoved in to point out the little teasers which seemed pointless and unsatisfying. Sam Jackson's Nick Fury was easily the most charismatic character in the film. It's surprising how lousy the Tony Stark scenes were the dialog just dragged on to the point I tuned out of the film during them. If Pepper Potts had been taken out of the film and Black Widow had been the love interest it could have worked and felt less bloated. I had expected to see Favreau fix his first act pacing problems that hurt the original film, only for him to repeat it. The film felt very rushed and little effort put into the film's actual plot.

I won't reveal the end teaser but it was the biggest disappointment of the whole movie. You would expect something more from Marvel but it just wasn't as good as Nick Fury showing up. I'm sure it will make lots of money I just hope this quality isn't repeated with the other films. I'm shocked how they weren't able to handle the amount of characters in Iron Man 2. It felt messy and I'm not sure how Avengers is going to work if they couldn't get this one right. It's not as bad as Wolverine or Spider-Man 3 but it's on the edge. It seems that the film was only made to setup the Marvel universe rather than giving us a compelling story.

C+