Because this is a movie that I really felt I should see with friends and since my friends prefer to avoid opening weekend on the big movies, I figured I'd be seeing Iron Man 2 in the coming weeks. My plan today was to see The Losers, which clearly did not go according to plan. The theater manager explained that The Losers has been doing so badly that they decided not to run it today and instead were running Iron Man 2 on that screen. Then they told me they'd be opening The Losers up for screening again later tonight around 8:00 PM. Unfortunately, I had already bought a ticket to The Losers, but I definitely didn't want to be around that long. So, I instead went and saw Iron Man 2. Therefore, no ticketstub for Iron Man 2. And now for the review part...
Similar to the first movie, I feel like this second installment was all about setting up other movies. Clearly we're pointing to another Iron Man movie. There's an Avengers movie. There's the Thor movie. There may have been others that my superhero ignorance prevents me from seeing. Therefore, I feel there was a lot of time spent setting up for movies other than the one I was actually watching. Some might call that fan-service, I call it distracting. This also meant there were lots of different storylines, but none of them were ever really filled out. For whatever reason, I enjoyed the interaction between Pepper Pots and Tony Stark the most, but that never really developed into anything meaningful or satisfying and, once again, felt like it was being left for some future movie. There's stuff about Tony's father and his involvement with Vanko (the father of Ivan Vanko, aka, Whiplash) and the Avengers. And this stuff with the government wanting control of the Iron Man "weapon" and Stark's corporate nemesis, Justin Hammer (Captain Hammer? No.) played very well by Sam Rockwell. There's a lot going on and none of it was deep. Maybe it's great fun if you're a huuuuge fan of the comics, but for my money, that doesn't excuse an ADD plot. Finally, I am not saying I didn't enjoy it, I did find it entertaining, I'm just not sure it was a great movie. And don't let the $133 million opening weekend tell you otherwise...