Two years on from the release, and immense success of Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man,” expectations are very different for the sequel. Star Robert Downey Jr. is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, the character has become the centrepiece of one of the most ambitious multi-film plans ever attempted, and, after the first film proved to be one of the most satisfying blockbusters of recent years, the filmmakers are going in with immense goodwill from their audience. Can it possibly match them?
The first film ended with Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) revealing to the world his secret identity as Iron Man, and (if you stayed past the credit) being approached by the mysterious Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to join something called ‘The Avengers Initiative.’ Aside from a brief opening scene that runs simultaneously with the end of “Iron Man,” the sequel picks up six months later with Stark enjoying his celebrity, but suffering from potentially fatal blood poisoning due to the ‘arc reactor’ that powers his suit.
That’s only the start of his problems, however, when he’s attacked at the Monaco Grand Prix by Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), who has a long standing grudge against the Stark family, and has managed to build himself an arc reactor of his own. He just about survives, but rival CEO Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) takes an interest in Vanko, and busts him out of prison to help him build suits to rival Iron Man. There’s plenty more going on too — Stark’s made his assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) the new CEO of Stark Enterprises, he’s falling out with best friend Jim Rhodes (Don Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard), and has hired an enigmatic new assistant (Scarlett Johansson), while Nick Fury’s still in the picture as well — you do certainly get your money’s worth of plot.
Many of the first film’s strengths have been replicated; Downey Jr.’s still the most offbeat, entertaining superhero lead ever, his chemistry with Paltrow is electric, and Favreau’s direction is mostly bang-on. In some ways, it’s even an improvement on the first film — the action sequences are better executed (although we missed the Spielbergian feel of some of the beats within the action scenes in the original), while Rourke and, in particular, Rockwell are both terrific, the former eccentric and menacing, the latter playing Hammer as a sort of B-list version of Stark, torn up with jealousy and self-loathing.
The trouble is, it also has many of the same flaws, but magnified. As relentlessly likable as the first film was, the script was the weak link; a beat-for-beat redo of “Batman Begins,” which, like that film, fell apart in its third act. For the first 40 minutes or so, it looks like scribe Justin Theroux’s cracked it — the film has a nice propulsion to it, as the pieces move around the board. The trouble is, once Rourke’s been defeated once at the end of the first act, the film loses any sense of momentum and threat, and it’s down to the villains. Hammer is unethical in his means, but there’s nothing particularly nefarious in what he wants to achieve — he’s trying to land a defense contract, there’s no masterplan. Vanko does have his own agenda, but it’s revealed so late in the game that it he mostly comes off as tech support.
With the villains never really feeling like a threat, Theroux tries to make the drama more internal, with Stark desperately searching for a cure; confronting his own mortality, he becomes increasingly self-destructive. Except because Downey Jr.’s so light and funny throughout, there’s never any doubt as to his survival, so again, it never feels like anything’s at stake. As a result, much of the film relies on two rival groups working on unconnected inventions in separate labs, and it’s pretty dull. Similarly, Stark’s such a badass in the Iron Man suit, dispersing every threat he meets almost instantly, that Theroux keeps contriving ways to keep him out of it, although you understand why once you reach the film’s final sequence — an entirely CGI shoot-em-up that you don’t care about the outcome of.
It’s certainly overstuffed (although comparisons to “Spider-Man 3” are misplaced; it’s infinitely better than that disaster), and could have stood to have lost at least one subplot. The Avengers stuff in particular seems unnecessary, as it doesn’t really move the Marvel end game any further on, and Jackson’s performance is almost close to self parody (although surprisingly, Scarlett Johansson acquits herself quite well, even without being given much to do).
Considering the usual quality level of the summer blockbuster, “Iron Man 2” may well turn out to be one of the more entertaining entries of the season, despite all that — the semi-improvisational feel brought by Favreau and Downey Jr. still works, and the film, like last year’s “Star Trek,” glosses over its weaknesses with wit and charm. But if Marvel are serious about building and sustaining the audience for their cinematic universe, they need to make sure that the stakes are high enough to justify the stories being told (hiring Joss Whedon for “The Avengers” is a good start), and most importantly, need to defer to the quality of the scripts, rather than to their pre-announced release dates. [C+]