The sequel that doesn’t stink!
Artwork by Rebecca Holt
Generally speaking, sequels are plain horrible. The plots don’t always seem reasonable, the story lines are almost always shoddy, the characters sometimes act differently, or have different actors, and the original film can be ruined, just for the sake of a couple more bucks. The Karate Kid, for example, was great, but the sequels made the whole franchise a joke. The Mask has always been one of my favorite silly movies, but it’s sequel, Son of the Mask, made me physically ill! And most importantly, George Lucas completely ruined his original Star Wars trilogy with his prequels.
However, some directors make sequels as good as, or better, than their originals. Terminator 2 is widely regarded as the best Terminator movie, The Dark Knight made it;s predecessor Batman Begins look like a pushover, and The Two Towers absolutely blew audiences away. Director Jon Favreau has joined this club, and done the nigh impossible: he’s created a sequel that isn’t garbage! With all my ranting on sequels, it’s surprising that I enjoyed the movie, but it’s hard to not enjoy a film that expands on the original and keeps the same formula that worked for the first movie. Is Iron Man 2 as good as the original? Yes. Better? I don’t think so, but it is without a doubt just as amazing as the first.
We begin this movie as a Russian news channel shows Billionaire Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr., Sherlock Holmes) iconic press conference where he reveals himself as Iron Man. Meanwhile, in a depressing, dirty, Russian apartment we meet Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler) as he tries to ignore the TV and focus on his dying father, Anton Vanko. As Anton slips away, Ivan lets out a roar that sounds more like constipation than rage, and swears revenge on Tony Stark and Stark Industries for some vague reason. Pulling out some blueprints for Stark’s miraculous invention, the Arc Reactor, Ivan starts building his own version of the reactor.
Thanks to Tony Stark’s alter ego Iron Man, the major superpowers of the world have signed an international peace treaty, so Tony decides to continue his late father’s dream of world peace by opening the “Stark Expo”, a year long showcase of international technological advances. However, the United States Government wants a piece of the Iron Man action, and wants to put American soldiers in Iron Suits. Insisting that Stark’s technology is being replicated in the rest of the world, techno rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) tries to dethrone Stark by showing satellite images of potential suits in Iran and North Korea. Stark hacks the screens and shows that they are nowhere near functional, and that Hammer himself was there, aiding the other governments. Stark exclaims, “I am Iron Man, therefore the suit and I are inseparable,” and refuses to let the government get his technology.
On a side note, that whole scene is written beautifully. Stark is stuck in front of a Senate committee of stuffed senators, and is making them look like ignorant mongrels. The dialogue is masterfully written, and I found myself laughing out loud numerous times as Stark repeatedly ridicules the pompous senators. I found Hammer annoying immediately -which I believe is the point- but I was cheering every time Stark took Hammer down a notch.
After Stark exits the courtroom we learn that the palladium core of the Arc Reactor that is keeping Stark’s heart beating, is also slowly poisoning him. If one remembers back to the first Iron Man, Tony Stark was taken captive by terrorists after an explosion that nearly killed him. Stark had to keep himself alive by building a miniature Arc Reactor that could keep his heart beating, using a core of the element palladium. Anyway, now that core is poisoning him, and all his other attempts at utilizing other elements have ended in failure. With his mortality so obvious, Stark is acting even more reckless than usual, making his girlfriend/assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, Two Lovers) CEO of Stark Industries, blowing off his friends, and trying to enjoy his last bits of life. However, when racing in Monaco, Ivan crashes the party with his own Arc Reactor and two electric whips of destruction. Stark just barely defeats Ivan and gets him thrown in a Monaco prison, but Hammer decides to break the Russian out of jail. Hammer wants Ivan to build him Iron Man suits so that he can sell them to the military.
Stark throws what he believes will be his last birthday party ever, gets a little crazy, and forces his best friend Lt. Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle, Traitor) to pull on one of the Iron Man suits and subdue him. On another side note, the late, great DJ AM makes an appearance as himself, and is an entertaining guest. It’s truly sad that we’ve lost such an amazing persona. He also does a great job of coming up with a beat to “whoop my buddy,” as Stark says before attacking Rhodes. I couldn’t help but dance in my seat as Another One Bites the Dust by Queen and Robot Rock by Daft Punk played as the two robo-men beat the software out each other. However, the night ends with Stark’s mansion in ruins, Rhodes betraying Tony and flying off to deliver the suit to the military, and Pepper storming out on him.
The rest of the story regards the mysterious Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, Unthinkable), the even more mysterious S.H.I.E.L.D. organization, and the evil Russian building an army of Iron Drones while Stark works to find a cure for his poisoning. It’s a little complicated, and it’s even harder to explain without giving some good things away, but it’s not so complex as to go over the head of the viewer. The movie has some amazing special effects, especially the holographic computer screens with which Stark interacts, and the last battle scene is pretty impressive, especially for CGI. Editors Dan Lebental and Richard Pearson deserve an award, because there are no tell tale signs of CGI apart from the scenes being too impossible to be real.
As good as Iron Man 2 was, it wasn’t completely perfect. Rourke’s Russian baddie was shallow, hard to understand, and plain dirty. I mean, sure, Ivan comes from the Russian slums, but Rourke looks like he forgot to shower every day. And his lines were so simplistic that it seemed like completely different writers wrote the script for Rourke. Ivan also was talking about the years of suffering that Stark’s father had caused him and others, but aside from kicking out Anton for espionage, I didn’t really see any suffering of others. I also hated how Terrence Howard, the original actor for Rhodes, was replaced with Don Cheadle for the second movie. Now don’t get me wrong, Don Cheadle is an amazing actor, and he did great for this role, but it just seemed as if his character didn’t mesh with Stark as well as Howard’s did. The longstanding friendship was easy to see in the first movie, and was believable, but with the sequel it seemed thrown together at the last minute, and not very realistic.
Despite some mediocre casting, Iron Man 2 blasted its way onto my good movies list with some superior acting from Downey Jr., fantastic action, spectacular dialogue wherever Stark was involved, and a magnificent, fast-paced storyline that refused to do what so many other sequels do. This movie is funny without getting offensive, entertaining without going over the top, and exciting without getting tacky. Maybe Hollywood was just trying to make more money from the franchise, but at least they did it right this time. My enemy has humbled me, and I graciously accept my defeat this time. Bravo, Hollywood. Bravo.
