Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Iron Man 2

Today I fulfilled my patriotic duty to the United States of America in two ways:  1) I voted for the first time of my life, and 2) I went to see a silly popcorn-wasting blockbuster Hollywood movie.  Obviously the latter is more important for the continuing prosperity of my nation, but voting is nice too.

Now beyond merely public service, I had to see this movie:  Robert Downey Jr. Blessed Be His Name, is the star, of course.  The man has been on an epic winning streak which I previously pointed out in my review of "Sherlock Holmes".  Thanks to that, I might wind up seeing every Robert Downey Jr. movie that will be made until his star power fades from this Earth when he is taken from us by the cruel hands of the Grave.  Also "Iron Man 1" was easily one of the best movies of 2008, almost entirely because of Downey Jr.'s effortless yet perfect portrayal of comic book playboy, Tony Stark, and thanks to an excellent supporting cast of Terrence Howard, evil bald Jeff Bridges, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

It was a fun movie.  More importantly with his egotism and alcohol issues, the character of Tony Stark seemed to offer some hints of deep personal issues that could be sorted out in the next few films that could really get into the meat of this franchise.  There's definitely more to this character than just his playboy attitude and 70s sunglasses.  But does "Iron Man 2" actually deliver on that kind of promise?

Short answer:  no.  Its just another comic book movie.  If anything, it has less meaning than the first.  Actually, I think I could save a lot of time here just by using a George Orwell quote:  "Nineteen out of twenty reviews would be more honest if they just said 'this book inspires no particular thoughts in me whatsoever'".  (I can't find the exact wording, but that's about it.)

Here's the thing:  instead of really dealing with all the things clearly wrong with Tony Stark, "Iron Man 2" actively avoids the issue in many ways.  First of all, the big personal conflict he has isn't internal, but external in the form of his artificial glowworm heart poisoning his blood.  Also there's evil Russian Mickey Rourke, who is taking over villain duties for evil bald Jeff Bridges.  The trailer implied that Rourke was some kind of scientist who either Tony or his father betrayed, and so was out for rightful revenge.  That might have led to some personal doubts over whether his cause is truly righteous in Tony Stark's mind, and this movie is already far too complicated for such things.  It turns out that this is entirely not the case and that the Stark family is completely squeaky clean, and Rourke is plain old cartoony evil.  So instead we have an extra twenty minutes of men in robot suits fighting other men in robot suits or just plain old robots.  Which is fine, I'll admit.  But there's nothing special about it.

Nothing on alcoholism, nothing on improving himself to be right for Gwyneth Paltrow, really nothing at all.  Tony Stark is still a fun character to hang around, but there doesn't seem to be all that much behind it all.  "Iron Man 1" had Robot Downey Jr.'s character abandoning his war profiteer status and using his powers for good - that gave an important character development and something to drive the movie.  This time its just Stark beating up bad guys.  The movie even touches on some important issues:  what would the US government do if a private citizen, benevolent though he may be, amassed enough power to singlehandedly overthrow it?  Then it throws those issues away with Stark's clowning, and moves on to some robot fighting.

There are so many great actors in this movie, including Don Cheadle* of all people, but they don't really have anything to do.  Scarlett Johansson is the one I really feel bad for:  she's just in this movie to look pretty and take part in some entirely unnecessary kung-fu action scenes.  She's entirely unnecessary to the entire movie.  She's here either to take up the male fanservice demand since Paltrow has gotten a little old, or she's here to build up the upcoming "Avengers" movie.  No matter which way you play it, she doesn't add much to this script.  A star of Johansson's status and an actress of her quality should not spend a movie sitting to the sidelines with maybe three lines and not a hint of characterization.  Even Paltrow seems to have lost something of her charm from "Iron Man 1".  I can't define exactly what was lost, but its definitely not here.  Maybe its just because she let her hair down...

You know, I could sit here and write a furious philippic about how this entire movie is basically pointless and give a paranoid rant about how this is another symptom of the growing dehumanization of filmmaking, but I won't do that.  Armond White already did that for me**.  All I can say was that I expecting something a bit more than just a blockbuster.  That's all it is:  a blockbuster.  No better, no worse, nothing special, nothing worth remembering.  The series has definitely devolved a bit here.  But what do you expect?  Its a comic book movie.  Its a sequel.  "Iron Man 3" will probably be even worse, and "Avengers" will certainly be absolutely awful (these predictions were made first at Planet Blue, folks, remember that).  We could have had another "Dark Knight", instead its "X-Men 2".  It isn't horrible, but it isn't great either.  If you just want an afternoon's entertainment and have a dire medical need to polish off a bag of overpriced popcorn, here's your movie.  That's all there is to say.  I'm completely numb to this movie.

Last Minute Update:  The "You Complete Me Scene" featured prominently in just about every single trailer, wasn't included in the movie!  What the heck?  This was a really funny and charming moment.  Yeah, I know the joke is old after seeing it about five trillion times on TV, but it still doesn't make sense that they couldn't just throw it in at the end or something to show that Stark and Potts have "something" of a working relationship and he's still going to fight crime.  Instead you have a boring scene setting up "Avengers", not that I care one bit about that movie.  I hate it when movies do this, its entirely inexcusable.  If it appears in your trailer, it has to appear in the movie.  No 'ifs', 'ands', or 'buts', it has to go in.

Fanwank Corner:  One trailer in particular before this movie caught my eye:  "The Expendables".  Let me just list the cast:  Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger - who somehow managed to appear in this movie despite his claims of being a "respectable politician" (yeah right).  This is the greatest assemblage of action movie stars ever brought to the face of this Earth!  All you need is Samuel L. Jackson and Mel Gibson and then you'll have created a concoction of such incredible badassry that it would blow a hole right in the fabric of our reality and possibly end all life on this planet.  There's no way I'm not seeing this movie.

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* Turns out that Terrance Howard and Don Cheadle are actually completely interchangeable actors.  If one of them is giving you lip, just hire the other guy.  That should solve things.  I think I'm the only one who really misses Terrance Howard in this movie, because everybody else is fine with the shift.  Are Black actors really this replaceable?  Will Denzel Washington be in "Iron Man 3"?

** Reading that review, I get the sneaking suspicion that White didn't actually see the movie he's supposed to be reviewing.  Not that having seen the movie would have made a bit of difference, there's nothing here that possibly could have surprised any jaded film viewer, and definitely nothing here that would knock that heavy chip off of White's sanctimonious shoulders.  He's the Yahtzee of the movie world, just a lot less funny.

14 comments:

  1. The Expendables...I've been waiting for it for about 2 years. Will be brilliant, I heard they want to make a modern twist on 90's action flicks. As for Ironman 2, damn in Scarlett Johannson hot. Jesus, screw Paltrow, I can't believe Robert didn't tap that. Anyway, I found the movie ok, and I agree with you, it's just a typical blockbuster. My target on the Marvel movies is Captain America.

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  2. Are you intentionally putting half your posts in dummy links just to annoy anyone reading with an RSS reader?

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  3. iron man 2 was a terrible film. unfortunately it was only me and my indignation who demanded their 2 hours back when the lights went on in the cinema. everyone else walked out chirping away about how good it was ¬_¬ scarlet johansson deserved so much more, her hair, her five lives of dialogue, she was just so terrible in that film... and Sam Rockwell! He was just a stand in for that other guy from avatar. Souless corporate businessman, he could do so much more. Such a bad film it makes me angry.

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  4. To Uppfin: I have no idea what a "RSS" is, or what a "dummy link" is either. I was just linking to things to show off this blog's history. There's probably going to be a lot of cross-linking between posts in the future.

    To Hammy: Sam Rockwell was pretty damn hilarious in this movie despite everything. "I'd love to leave my door unlocked at night, but this ain't Canada."

    To YKP: I'll admit that Scarlett Johansson was more attractive in this movie but that was almost certainly a conscious choice by the director since she's supposed to be a superhero or something. Paltrow is definitely more age-appropriate for Downey Jr.'s character, right. (Not that that should matter to Johansson fans, see "Lost in Translation".)

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  5. LMAO Bill Murray. Scarlett Johnannson plays Black Widow btw, so Samuel be gettin' dat a$$. And yes, I agree with you on Paltrow being age appropriate...but come on! :D

    Two things dissapointed me in this movie: the switching of the actor that plays James Rhodes was a big mistake. You feel this sort of bond between Downey and Terrence Howard in the first one, and now it's all gone. At least it made the character more forgivable for handing over the war machine suit like that.

    The other thing that ticked me off: Where was this "exploration into alcoholism and depression" thing? Robert jumping around drunk in the Ironman suit was not what I was expecting, I thought he'd be more like Mickey Rourke, who played a fantastic role might I add in.

    Styllll, good movie, I enjoyed it.

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  6. It wasn't that bad of a film, certainly better than Spider-Man 2 and X2. While I agree it's no Dark Knight, it did have a bit more depth than most blockbusters, which I assure you others won't have this summer (like The Expendables).

    Regarding The Expendables, how could you not have heard about it by now? It's buzz has been fairly big from hat I've seen. I know a lot of people who are talking about it (in real life, not on the internet).

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  7. RSS is a way to get notified of new posts on blogs and sites you follow, and half your posts are within links that goes nowhere but still makes Flock's Feed Reader freak out. Your older posts doesn't do like this, but since your post about Sheik all of them has. Check http://s956.photobucket.com/albums/ae44/uppfinnarn/Random%20Pics/?action=view&current=PlanetBlueRSSDummyLink.png if you don't get what I mean.

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  8. So the problem is with the "Read More" page shortening thing? I only did that to be more organized, but it can easily be removed if its causing problems for my readers.

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  9. As it is now it's causing problems for everyone using your RSS feed... If you can manually edit the HTML for the page, you could try changing the tag to  . I'm not sure if it'll work, but it could be worth a try if you want to use the excerpt function. What you do with the code I suggested is to link an empty space instead of nothing, since that has caused things to freak out before.

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  10. What I tried to suggest there was to change <a name='more'></a> to <a name='more'>&nbsp;</a>, but it actually executed my HTML...?

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  11. Despite the task I have with running an entire blog, I'm actually just about the least computer literate person on this website. (This is why I took a Blogspot account rather than go through the mammoth task of actually creating my own website from scratch.) As far as I can tell, there aren't any glitches here. If there is a problem, and you know how to fix it, describe it to me as if I were a child... or your parents.

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  12. I agree with your review Blue. I liked Iron Man 2, but it is not something I have had any interest in after leaving the theater. Also, I felt Kick-Ass was a better superhero/comic book film from this year.

    As for trailers before the movie, the new one for Inception really caught my eye.

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  13. The easiest way would actually be to disable the automatic excerpts, or simply get your own domain name and install Wordpress on it, since Wordpress actually handles more links correctly. If you don't like manually editing source code, I'd recommend you to just disable the excerpts. And hosting your own site isn't a mammoth task, it can actually be easier than using Blogger or similar very limited pre-built GUIs. Wordpress and a few plugins will do what Blogger does, better.

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  14. My site actually runs wordpress with several tweaks and custom plugins I wrote myself...

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