Iron Man 2 (Yellow)

If you're wondering what the (Yellow) business is about click here.

I predicted that Iron Man 2 would be a disappointment and it was but not as much as I thought it would be.

Before the movie came out I kept an eye on its Rotten Tomato rating. It started in the eighties and had sunk all the way down to 66% before raising a bit and settling at 75%. That's a good spot for it.

This movie had so much potential but fails to even try to be an original movie. When I got out of the theater I was only slightly disappointed. Mostly I was just disappointed by the lame climactic showdown. At work the next day, the more I thought about the movie the more disappointed I became.

Why on Earth was Scarlet Johansson in this movie? Her character had no arc and did nothing to move the plot along. At best she was there to help the Avengers/SHEILD story but if you ask me that subplot had way too much screen time. The Black Widow character should not have been written.

Mickey Rourke as Whiplash was almost a cameo. The movie didn't start to get disappointing until after Whiplash's first attempt at taking out Iron Man. That's when he, who was supposed to be the main antagonist, stops having direct conflict with the protagonist and instead spends the rest of his time working in a lab until the end of the movie. Lame sauce.

When he does come back he has his own bigger and better suit but I'm pretty sure that was the same climax as the first movie. It's bad enough that they do it again in the second one but they also have Iron Man and War Machine teaming up to do something we've seen Iron Man do himself. The fight is also way too short.

There is so little antagonism in this movie, it comes dangerously close to boring.

But it's not all bad. Antagonism issues are almost a given in comic book movie sequels .

This isn't a bad movie. Just disappointing. I still laughed out loud more then once. The Iron Man suit is still way cool (as is the new War Machine). The suit case suit was a great throw back to the comics.

I don't know much about acting but I enjoyed RDJ and Mickey Rourke (for the short amount of time he was there). Don Cheadle as Rhodey had some solid moments as well. That roof stuff at the end made me laugh. The only Rhodey complaint I have would be the conflict between him and Tony. The filmmakers were trying to get some much needed conflict in the middle of the movie but it didn't work.

I would say lower your expectation and go see this movie. You'll have a god time if you already know it's not as good as you hopped.

(On the plus side Tony does get drunk while wearing the suit and it's really funny)