Last week I caught Iron Man 2 and it was so good that I couldn’t find the words to describe my feelings. Actually, it was just so boring that I couldn’t bring myself to bother.
I loved the first Iron Man. I liked it so much that I had a hard time keeping it out of my top five films from last year. However, I’m also coming to realize that I’m just not a comic book story fan. While everyone else loved Dark Knight (and I liked all the Joker parts) I preferred the first Christian Bale effort so much more and this seems to keep happening. What I now realize I like is the back story. I’m very interested in the how’s and why’s and not so much the now’s.
Iron Man 2 is, by and large, a non-stop action movie and it does very little with regard to actual story telling. Like every other comic book tale there’s a bad guy, there’s a good guy and after a lot of effects the bad guy loses.
What story there is I found to be confused time and again. It was hard to keep track of all the tiny little turns it tried to take. Worse, the story just flat out got lost in parts. Elements would be mentioned only to never surface again.
Then there was the issue with distractions. Characters appear, seemingly out of nowhere, as if we’re expected to have known them like best friends all along. I also didn’t care, even a bit, for Scarlett Johansson’s character. Frankly, to be honest, her career is really starting to bore me to no end.
After fits of broken story we’d head right back into the action. Even here the movie suffered as the effects were very much overdone and convoluted. It was hard to keep track of it all and, in the end, I just didn’t care.
One big confusing element I couldn’t resolve as a non-fan is that Iron Man keeps on hand several suits (that concern Congress and the Army to no end) even though we’ve only ever seen him wear the red and gold suit. They seemed here only to be available for when Don Cheadle decides he needs to help out. I love Robert Downey Jr. but this is just not his best work and it’s not his fault. It’s also disappointing to see Gweneth Paltrow so absolutely wasted here.
