Like a drunk staggering around a car park looking for his van, the plot circles the idea of Tony dying from palladium poisoning from his chest piece - "The very thing keeping you alive is killing you" explains his robotic butler Jarvis, in case any member of the audience is allergic to finding irony in its raw form.
So, understandably, Tony is going off the rails somewhat. Constant drinking, borderline psychotic behaviour, blue veins visible on the face - the entire set of symptoms one sees on any given night in Liverpool. The difference being that, as a rule, most Scousers don't have access to military-grade battle suits capable of levelling small continents. So, again understandably, everyone is a little wary of Stark and desperately try to pry the doomsday technology out of his gin-addled mitts.
All well and good in paragraph form, but those two passages are stretched over a good hour of the film, giving it a meandering feel that it never quite recovers from. One of the many good things about the original is that something was always happening, and happening with style and flair at that. The same groove is still here, but rather than being served as a side dish it's presented as the main course, disguising the fact that not a lot is actually going on.
The Grand Prix scene, whilst vesceral and dynamic, is built up for so long that it merely amounts to too little too late. Which is a shame, because the sequel got something right the original never really managed: The Villains.
In Vanko and Hammer we have two worthy adversaries to Stark (one with brains, one with moolah), so that when they join forces they have a hope of challenging him in a way that doesn't disrupt the canon of Stark being the smartest being to wear slacks.
It's also made very clear that Vanko is far too unstable to be left his own devices to perform as simple a task as going to the bathroom without murdering someone, and Hammer is too much of a weasely, limp-wristed, jumped up little lightweight to tie his shoelaces without running into trouble.
Now, as a rule, the first character will write itself. Vanko is more than happy to ride the evil merry-go-round of "look gruff", "speak without connecting verbs" and "kill people", but Hammer's character takes real finesse to realise - and scribe Justin Theroux (Tropic Thunder) pulls it off with considerable aplomb. His main strength is realising that the difference between real life Not Funny and movie Not Funny is that the latter still has to be, paradoxically, Funny.
While the attention to detail with the characters is sublime, the same cannot be said about the plot.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't expect, or even want, the story to cement itself into reality, but it even goes against its own logic from the first film. Take, for example, Don Cheadle's Rhodes acquiring the first Iron Man Suit. Questions like "how did he power it", "how come it fits" and "why can he use it without practice" go unceremoniously unanswered, especially since the first question was a major plot point in the original. It's true that this doesn't break the film in any way, but part of the charm of the original was, for me at least, the delicious mix of convincing story and off-the-wall action.
The first film actually had a few pretences to meaning, and there was always that underlying question of whether or not Stark himself was a bigger danger to the world than the people he fought - what with all of those guns dotted about the planet, emblazoned with his own company's logo and whatnot. Here the question is rendered moot as he attends parties and galas, casually wearing the world's biggest weapon of mass destruction like a motorised Tuxedo. Of the film's flaws, the biggest is that the suit just doesn't feel special any more.
In fact the only thing still relatively in tact is the relationship between the lead and Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts[footnote]You'll have to forgive me for not mentioning her in the character section, but she doesn't wear a catsuit, fire a rocket or become Sam Rockwell at any point during the film. It's her own fault, really.[/footnote], which is still the greatest superhero romance captured on film for my money. It's spiky, touching and flawed, and even manages to overshadow some of the brain-melting action scenes.
To be perfectly frank, it isn't its own movie. With all of the cheeky references to rest of the Marvel Universe (the amount you spot rises in direct proportion to how single you are) it feels like a preview, as if a teaser of things to come. Between the seemingly incongruous appearance of Black Widow (not that I'm complaining or anything) to the reveal of another character's calling card, it seems that the movie is looking towards the future, rather than just looking where it's going.
[HEADING=1]Well you should, because I feel bad!"[/HEADING][HEADING=3]"No Mum, it's just Sam and Ryan. And Nathan Fillion too, obviously. N- No Mum, you didn't do anything wrong... Look Mu- MUM! Will you just put Dad on the phone?"[/HEADING]
[HEADING=1]I know what I'm doing."[/HEADING][HEADING=3]Yes, but unfortunately so do the people who are funding you.[/HEADING]
i don't have much in the way of a life so it gives me time to think lol. Did you enjoy the film itself?
