[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img]The foremost question of “Iron Man 2” is: What happened to the Jon Favreau of the first Iron Man and Zathura? That Favreau was a director from the old school, comfortable with modern CGI effects but at home in the roots of classical filmmaking and, crucially, well-versed in the storytelling arts. In the armored superhero’s second outing, however, Favreau has been edged out by Marvel’s marketing committee. Iron Man 2 groans from the stress of maneuvering into place all the pieces for the upcoming Avengers movie.
When it’s entertaining, and it often is, credit mostly goes to a plucky cast and lingering feelings of good will from the first film. There’s just enough of it to overlook queasy comic timing and a pace best saved for Sunday morning drivers. Unforgivable for a production of this quality, however, are scenes of brain-jarring implausibility. In the context of the film’s science fiction, the speculative and advanced technology rests contently within internally consistent story logic. But at last check, when a man is slammed into steel railings by an aggressively moving car – repeatedly – the laws of physics and biology still suggest that he shouldn’t be walking as if tickled with a feather. Sorry…what was the movie about, again?
Moving past the reality check doesn’t get much more encouraging. Screenwriter Justin Theroux tries to weave together multiple plots better described as “notions”: Tony Stark dying of Palladium poisoning; the machinations of a corporate rival hoping to become the Dept of Defense’s new weapons darling; and the vendetta of a rival with connections to Tony’s father. All these, and eye-patch Jackson as SHIELD director Nick Fury brought in to name-drop the Avenger Initiative to excite fans familiar with the comics.
So many plots, yet the film feels aimless and trivial, further hindered by strangely so-so action sequences. Justin Hammer, Stark’s competition played by Sam Rockwell, is a tiresome twit, a geek without brains, who never presents a credible threat to Stark either intellectually or technologically. Potentially more fearsome is Mickey Rourke, in dominant acting form as the formidable Ivan Vanko aka Whiplash, but he is mostly shunted off to the side except for a few action bookends. After much buildup, the introduction of the militarized armour dubbed War Machine not only lacks the techno-fetishistic “wow” factor that saturated the first film’s unveiling of the signature Iron Man armour, but singularly short-changes the concept. This, despite a dramatic falling-out between Tony Stark and best bud Col. Rhodes (Don Cheadle, who takes over the role from Terence Howard). As for the unexplained Avengers plot stuffing, there’s only so much enthusiasm to be had over an extended Easter Egg that doesn’t really capitalize on either Samuel L. Jackson or Scarlett Johansson’s sexy undercover agent.
In a sense, the character of Vanko illustrates how unfocused the story is, especially in a time when movies rooted in comic books have consistently begun moving away from simple adventures towards stories that actually mean something. Although it’s arguably been done before – Batman Returns as a consideration of dual identities and psychological trauma, for example – Nolan’s recent Batman films remain the best examples of the extent it’s possible to dive into interesting comic book characters while touching on broader issues. So, too, did the previous Iron Man, to a lesser extent, even if what it ultimately delivered was irony: a film positioned as anti-militaristic while celebrating a mobile weapons platform and peace through superior technological force.
It is promising, then, that Iron Man 2 begins by confronting this irony with a Senate hearing in which the U.S. military, arguing that the Iron Man armour is a weapon, tries to coerce Stark into giving them the technology. Stark’s counterargument is that the armour is not a weapon, but a defensive system – besides, didn’t he just successfully privatize world peace? Never mind judging for yourself, either through dialogue or events; the movie’s promise is lost amidst Stark’s ego, a demeaned Pepper Pots (chief whining officer of Stark Industries), and the relentlessly inert plot. For all the talk of how Iron Man has altered the balance of power and ushered a new era of relative stability, what little action there is never leaves Los Angeles, except for one scene set in Monaco. When the world, we are told, begins to get nervous as Stark Iron Man disappears and Stark secretly self-destructs, we just have to accept that a single man in a suit really made so much difference to the world order that the U.S. military all but panics without him.
Back to Vanko, then, who enters the scene with the fury of Stark Industries’ unintentional victims. At last, an equal to Stark who can really pick up where the first film trailed and confront the high cost of a privileged life. Except that the script has no real ambition beyond soap opera theatrics. Vanko’s vendetta proves humdrum, nothing more than the jealous resentment of someone who feels cheated out of wealth and glory. The moral of the story: don’t expect political acumen from a movie that doesn’t quite know what to do with itself, but looks good doing it.
Entertainment: * (out of two)
Craft: * (out of two)
Iron Man. Written by Justin Theroux, based on the Marvel comic by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby. Directed by Jon Favreau. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadler, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johannson, Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell. 124 minutes. PG-13.
