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Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

The defense rests: 9 out of 10

Okay so even if Scarlett Johansson weren’t in this and weren’t just as hot as the day is long, Iron Man 2 kicks ass. It throws a lot at the audience but the majority hits the target. You couple that with terrific performances across the board, funny clever writing and great action and special effects and you have gold.

Since the last time we saw him, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) has developed some problems. First he is being hauled in to a Senate hearing in a bid from Senator Stern (Gary Shandling) for Stark to turn over the Iron Man tech to the US government for military applications. Stern enlists Stark’s friend James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) and rival industrialist Justin Hammer ( Sam Rockwell) to testify against him but he demonstrates that the rival companies’ tech is years from being perfected while embarrassing Hammer in the process.

Second, the palladium that powers the arc reactor that is keeping him alive is not-so-slowly killing him. He is unable to find a suitable replacement for the palladium and each time he puts on the Iron Man suit his blood poisoning is accelerated. This leads to him doing reckless things like handing over the company to his assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), hiring an assistant who is preternaturally gorgeous in addition to being a S.H.I.E.L.D plant, driving his own race car in Monaco and getting drunk at a party and letting Rhodes fly off with one of his suits.

The third problem comes in the form of Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), a brilliant inventor who believes that Stark’s father screwed his own father over and stole his designs. Basically if Nikola Tesla had a roided out son who could finish his Teleforce weapon and wanted to use it on Thomas Edison’s kid it would probably play out something like this.  Vanko intercepts Stark at Monaco and does a ton of damage before Stark subdues him with his suitcase armor. Vanko escapes custody with the help of Justin Hammer and S.H.I.E.L.D intervenes on Stark’s self destructive behavior to provide him a possible means to cure himself. This sets the stage for a showdown of technology,  ideas and Scarlett Johansson’s boobs.

A problem with super hero sequels is that often they try to do too much. It is as if they don’t know what to do to fill time now that they don’t have an origin to tell. So they will toss in a bunch of villains and not spend enough time on anyone and you are left feeling hollow. While there is a lot going on in Iron Man 2, the film manages to skirt this issue by providing characters with the personality and screen time to really flesh everything out. In doing so it sacrifices a bit of action as there are really only a few action set pieces to be found but that is okay because the characters are so fun and engaging.

Once again, Robert Downey Jr completely inhabits his role as Tony Stark and carries the movie from beginning to end. Everything about his swagger and feigned arrogance is hilarious and engaging. When it comes time for worry, he is aces on that front as well leaving you with the feeling that Stark is a real guy dealing with the sorts of problems that crop up when you announce to the world that you are a technology based super hero.

While Downey Jr would have been engaging to watch on his own, the supporting cast is equally strong. Mickey Rourke is ham fisted as Vanko but it works for him and never devolves into eye rolling territory no matter how much like Boris and Natasha his accent gets. Sam Rockwell plays Justin Hammer just right as he is something of Stark’s opposite number with all the swagger but none of the skill to back it up. He is a conniving, sniveling glad hander who isn’t really a bad guy as much as he is opportunistic perfectly willing to hire a psychopath if it puts him on top. He is a nice counter-point to the first movie’s Obidah Stane who was also opportunistic but went the extra mile to being psychopathic himself.  Hammer could have just as easily been a Stane clone but they went a different way and the movie is better for it.

Don Cheadle replaces Terrance Howard as James Rhodes and I think it is a good change. Howard didn’t really seem right for the part to me in the first movie and Cheadle works much better. When he has to stand in opposition to Stark, Cheadle brings just the right amount of believable regret. When it comes time for the action, he is still strong enough for you to buy that he can handle the suit. His chemistry with Downey Jr is icing on the cake and I was never reminded that the Cheadle had been a replacement.

Gwyneth Paltrow continues to have good chemistry with Downey Jr  in this installment and it punctuates the ups and downs of their relationship. Pepper Potts is a stronger character this time out and moves to a more commanding role. Again she is strong enough to believably stand up to Stark’s overbearing personality and is vulnerable enough to show just how much it hurts her to have to do it. Scarlett Johansson, likewise acquits herself well particularly in her big action scene. Samuel L Jackson reprises his role as Nick Fury with much more screen time than an after the credits cameo and does so with a smooth humor I wasn’t expecting but was a welcome surprise. I thought he would be more stern and commanding but it was nice to see him approach the role with more playfulness.

Performances aside, the story clips along nicely and generally manages not to lag or get boring. The tone it maintains throughout is pitch perfect as well and it manages to provide the necessary dramatic beats without getting bogged down with over the top melodrama while at the same time maintaining the sense of humor and fun all the way through. There are things at stake here and the movie takes these things seriously but never too seriously. It would have been a real shame if screenwriter Justin Theroux and director John Favreau had decided to try to go the Dark Knight route and made everything dark and bleak. It would have been easy to do that too had they relied to heavily on Stark’s alcoholism and Vanko’s revenge but instead they kept the tone lighter and more fun. The story also never forgets what it is an it is meant to do and while it isn’t something that will win any awards it is still very strong and does service to the source material.

The action and effects, while lacking a bit of the ‘holy shit!’ factor that came from seeing that they actually pulled this thing off in the first movie, are excellent and deliver the right amount of energy and speed without making it hard to follow or focus. Even without the wow factor of discovery, I thought the action sequences and effects here outstripped those in the first and I was very happy to have a full powered Iron Man to take on the villain this time around.

If there was one area that dragged the proceedings down it had to be the set ups for the upcoming Avengers movie. I love that these new Marvel films are all connected and reference each other but the moves made to that effect here stuck out like sore thumbs and felt more like marketing than actual organic developments in the story.  In these future tie in films I really hope that they serve their own story first and integrate the tie in stuff a bit more transparent.

I’ve seen a number of people on the internet say they were disappointed by Iron Man 2 and say that while the first one was great the second one was only good. I disagree with this and thing the sentiment stems from unrealistic expectations. As mentioned above, the first movie surprised a lot of people with its fresh delivery and eye popping effects. That the first movie ‘got it’ so well was a revelation which probably would have made it the gold standard for comic book movies if the Dark Knight hadn’t ever existed. Now, by the very nature of the thing, the audience isn’t surprised by any of these things, it is just expected. Iron Man 2 is more of the good stuff that the original had but it doesn’t really add a lot more on top of it. That is one of the problems with doing things so right the first time, the second time out there isn’t all that much to improve on. The movie could have tried to trump the first one they way many of these movies do by throwing in a ton of villains and several more action scenes but that would have just resulted in a bloated mess. As it is we are handed a movie that does exactly what it needs to and does it well.

Conclusion [9 out of 10]

Iron Man 2 a sequel the way it should be done. It is a continuation of themes from the first movie but stands on its own as well. It builds on the foundation of the first film without copying it and it does so with ample amounts of fun. It is one of the best comic book sequels and indeed one of the best comic book movies in general and it does so without aping any past efforts. This doesn’t mimic the Dark Knight, Spider-man 2 or X-Men 2 and is all the better for it. Iron Man 2 is its own movie and I hope that whenever the third one comes out it can manage to skirt the third movie curse and not be a total piece of shit.