Well, here it is. My most anticipated movie of the summer. Early reviews were somewhat mixed, it's holding about a 70% on RT. That's a solid 20% down from the first one. I must say, this movie was incredible. It felt a lot more like a "comic book" movie than the first. This is catered to fans of Marvel comics. There are tons of nods to The Avengers throughout, culminating in an awesome post-credits scene. It felt like a comic book. I'm positive that's the reason this is getting relatively worse reviews than the first one. This is a movie for comic book fans, it doesn't have the mass appeal that the first did.
I feel the need to mention one thing, Sam Rockwell is an absolute fucking legend and I will watch anything he's in. He was in the running for the role of Tony Stark in the first one, but obviously lost out to Robert Downey Jr. After seeing him play Justin Hammer, I would have loved to see how he would play Tony Stark. I know there are tons of RDJ fans out there, but I think Rockwell would have been the better choice. Anyways, he played a great broke man's 
version of Tony Stark. Justin Hammer is essentially simply not good enough to be Stark and Rockwell nailed that feeling. He stole every scene he was in and his interactions with RDJ were absolutely brilliant. Alright, enough of my man crush on Sam Rockwell. The rest of the cast was great too. RDJ was again fantastic as Tony Stark and I think Don Cheadle was an upgrade from Terrance Howard. Sam Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, and Mickey Rourke were all really good in their respective roles.
It was odd to see a superhero flick where the hero is out of his suit more than he was in it. Yet the story didn't suffer. This movie was more about Tony Stark than it was about Iron Man. I would have loved to see a bit more of the 'Demon in a Bottle' tone used. That series captured perfectly what a self descructive alcoholic Tony became and while the film showed some of those tendencies, it felt a bit underdeveloped. I wasn't really feeling the scene where he got drunk in the suit. I think there were better ways to both show Stark's personal problems and to get Rhodey into the War Machine armor. It would have been rather dark and wouldn't really have fit with the light feel of the film. Just something about that drunken party scene bugged me. Besides that I thought the story was great. They interweaved Hammer/Vanko as villians together quite well and avoided the cluttered villian problem. There were a few too cliche moments, like when Black Widow said "you've got your best friend back" when she rebooted Rhodey's armor. It was kind of cheesy and overstated, but that kind of stuff is prevalant in comic books so it's forgivable in the movie. Thought the Pepper/Tony relationship was a bit forced and unecessary. Tony's already got more than enough motivation and it doesn't add much to the story. Fortunately, it's taking a back seat and probably won't be a major part of the 3rd one.
version of Tony Stark. Justin Hammer is essentially simply not good enough to be Stark and Rockwell nailed that feeling. He stole every scene he was in and his interactions with RDJ were absolutely brilliant. Alright, enough of my man crush on Sam Rockwell. The rest of the cast was great too. RDJ was again fantastic as Tony Stark and I think Don Cheadle was an upgrade from Terrance Howard. Sam Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, and Mickey Rourke were all really good in their respective roles.It was odd to see a superhero flick where the hero is out of his suit more than he was in it. Yet the story didn't suffer. This movie was more about Tony Stark than it was about Iron Man. I would have loved to see a bit more of the 'Demon in a Bottle' tone used. That series captured perfectly what a self descructive alcoholic Tony became and while the film showed some of those tendencies, it felt a bit underdeveloped. I wasn't really feeling the scene where he got drunk in the suit. I think there were better ways to both show Stark's personal problems and to get Rhodey into the War Machine armor. It would have been rather dark and wouldn't really have fit with the light feel of the film. Just something about that drunken party scene bugged me. Besides that I thought the story was great. They interweaved Hammer/Vanko as villians together quite well and avoided the cluttered villian problem. There were a few too cliche moments, like when Black Widow said "you've got your best friend back" when she rebooted Rhodey's armor. It was kind of cheesy and overstated, but that kind of stuff is prevalant in comic books so it's forgivable in the movie. Thought the Pepper/Tony relationship was a bit forced and unecessary. Tony's already got more than enough motivation and it doesn't add much to the story. Fortunately, it's taking a back seat and probably won't be a major part of the 3rd one.
There was substantially less action than in the first one. It wasn't about Tony going balls to the wall in the suit, but the two major fight scenes were amazing. The final fight showcased the sheer awesomeness of both War Machine and Iron Man quite well. War Machine was essentially a complete bad ass, splitting drones in two with huge machine guns and the definitive shoulder mounted rail gun. Iron Man showcased a crazy new lasers that pretty much destroy everything they touch. The final final fight with Whiplash was rather short and it could have been an epic finale. I don't get the problems some people have with the pacing, I thought it was perfect. I never once felt like it was dragging and it balanced action with character development really well. I loved all the Avengers nods, they did their job in getting me even more excited for the follow up films too.
Bottom line: Iron Man 2 managed to be a spectacular comic book movie without being dark or gritty, all while catering pretty much exclusively to fans of the comics.
Overall score: 9 out of 10
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