We’re in the final countdown weeks of the May 7 release of, what I, along with a lot of you, consider to be one of the year’s most anticipated films. Marvel, intelligently, has moved right along with the production of their slate of superhero movies with the sequel of the Jon Favreau directed Iron Man. Peeing in your pants yet? Me either.
Let me start by saying that, while I was never a big fan of the character, I was a huge fan of the Iron Man movie. That was in most part due to the spot on casting of Robert Downey Jr. as the super smart and equally sharp tongued Tony Stark. In my opinion, there are few people that can rival RDJ in the quick wit category. Maybe that guy that played Sherlock Holmes. Oh…wait.
Anyway, I was completely happy with the first film until the last line, where, in front of the members of press, Stark blurts out “I am Iron Man”. What do you do with that in a follow up film? You have a superhero with an exposed identity, which just happens to be one of the most well known men in the world. How do you hide from that? Apparently you don’t.
In the previews dealt out thus far, we’ve seen more shots of Tony flaunting around in the suit with his mask off than we have a story. So, my question is, what should we expect going in? A comedy about a rich man parading around in his metal suit like a circus attraction or a great story, which has been brilliantly hidden by marketing. Let’s hope for the latter.
You wanna do the pros and cons? Nah, me either. But let’s do it anyway. Fortunately, there are a lot of pros from what I’ve seen. The cast is loaded with them. They even made an upgrade in the Rhodey department, dumping the squeaky Terrence Howard for Don Cheadle. Good move. Gwyneth Paltrow returns as Pepper Potts and Jon Favreau plays on both sides of the playground, serving not only as the director for the film, but also as Tony’s driver Hogan. Expect a little more from Samuel L. Jackson and his pirate patch (does that sound dirty to you, too) as he finishes off the roster of good guys as Nick Fury. I’m not entirely sure which version of the Black Widow we’re going to see, but Scarlett Johansson will be donning the skin-tight black suit. This could be oh so good in so many ways. I just hope she’s done extensive work with the choreographers. I may be wrong here, but she just seems clumsy to me. Then we have Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko…or Whiplash. Rourke is, well, Rourke. You either love him or hate him. Personally, I think he’s going to do great. Sam Rockwell, who’s underrated in my opinion, plays Justin Hammer.
Okay, who the hell is Justin Hammer? Again, I’m not married to the Iron Man character, so I had to do a little research. Yeah, we do that every now and then to supply you with good intel. Basically, Hammer is a more ruthless version of Tony Stark, although not quite up to par with our red and gold clad hero. He’s an industrialist competitor for Stark Industries, who also deals weapons to not only military organizations but to crime syndicates as well. In comic history, Hammer had the Iron Man technology and sold it to several beings, who would become members of Iron Man’s rogue gallery. The most famous being The Crimson Dynamo. Hammer also devised a way to remotely control the actual Iron Man suit. A skill he used to assassinate an ambassador.
That makes for a pretty impressive story, if they use it. It also appears, just from the previews, that Hammer wants to engage in a tech war with Stark, creating an army of, what I’m assuming are robots to battle Iron Man and Rhodey, who we’ll see in the War Machine suit.
Now the cons. I’m going to be picky here, because to be honest, I’m really looking forward to seeing this, and its hard to be critically objective about something that you WANT to be good. But, I did see on IMDB that there are a couple of cast members slotted for the roles of Howard Stark and a young Tony Stark. Do you know what that means? DING DING DING…flashback. God I hate flashbacks. Hey, I told you I was going to be picky. There’s a fine line between making the F word work and having it F up a movie. Maybe Favreau has the Midas touch on it. We’ll see. Then, as I mentioned before, you have Stark exposing the identity of Iron Man to the world. Its just not good business, Tony! Oh no. You’ve got to have an ace in the hole. Finally, I’ve seen a few iffy CGI shots in the limited video I’ve seen. I saw this crap happen with the Spiderman franchise. They make a decently seamless original, where the special effects really make you believe and then its like they just don’t care as much about the second one and rely too heavily on the CG shots. I felt like I got kicked in my left one, when I heard about Green Lantern’s suit. But that’s for another day. You’ll hear a lot of people out in internet land say that previews sometimes contain unfinished shots, which is a load of crap. I’m going to blatantly steal Hugh Jackman’s analogy for the leaked incomplete Wolverine movie and say that no one wants to show you a Ferrari without a paint job. Although, after seeing that adamantium cluster, I’m pretty sure he meant to say Fierro. The message is true enough, though.
In any case, Iron Man 2 is bound to rake in the dough for the studio, and do what its intended to do, which is serve as a vessel for the Avengers movie. I’ll touch on that, and how I think Joss Whedon may actually be the right guy for that gig later on. But for now, you only have a few more weeks. I might even come back with a review.
Tue, April 20, 2010 
