From the get go, it’s made clear that this is a movie about legacy.
It runs parallel with the beginning of the MCU. The cinematic universe and movie monster making giant that dominates todays blockbuster industry.
The film starts off with a man dying.
In his bed, in Siberia, the television playing the presser that we left off at in the last film;
Stark at the stand fielding questions until he gets fed up with the charade.
For the man in bed, this doesn’t look like happy moment. His son, played by Mickey Rourke, makes his way over to his dying dad and tells him not to pay attention to the tube.
His dad dies, and after a fit of screaming rage, Rourke gets to work. He pulls out the plans for an arc reactor, bearing the name of Howard Stark and Anton Vanko, who must be his pops, and starts jimmying up some weapons.
There’s a montage depicting the latest exploits of Tony and his armour and how he has been,
“Stabilizing east-west relations”
We can tell that this guy is just a teeny bit obsessed. And that he has an affinity for his pet parrot. And tooth picks.
The prologue ends with Russian Rourke pulling out a laser skipping rope and slicing through an old T.V.
And the credits roll.
We’re pretty clear, from the outset, that this guy is motivated by revenge. Tony’s dad, it looks like, ripped off his pops and now, with him gone, he suddenly has the motivation to do something about it.
Classic revenge driven villain, bent on forcing the hero to atone for past transgressions they may or may not know about.
Stereotypical.
We get ACDC as Tony jumps out of a plane over a city. He maneuvers through a field of fireworks above the skyline before dropping down and landing super hero style, centre stage, backed up by Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders in Iron Man get ups.
His suit is dissembled for the viewing of a rockus crowd as he emerges in a three piece and begins his presentation for the Stark Expo.
It’s a wicked entrance and I hate being the wet blanket who wonders why Iron Man has to jump out of a plane to land on stage when he could’ve just flown there himself.
But hey, it looks cool, so let’s move past it.
The speech Tony gives is telling of the plot and direction this story will take.
He pumps his own tires, as per usual, before casting all of that aside and bringing up the topic of legacy.
Legacy; what we leave behind for future generations that come after us.
He lends the stage to an old film of his father Howard talking about how future technology will solve all our problems and make the world a better place.
Tony inconspicuously goes backstage and checks his blood with a little device.
We read that his “Blood toxicity” level is at 19%.
So Tony’s sick. And not in the fun way.
Tony and Happy carve their way through the crowd toward the car.
Reporter Olivia Munn covers the action for the news while government agent Kate Mara waits by the car, playing coy, till she serves Tony a subpoena demanding he appear before a senate hearing in Washington D.C. the next day.
So Tony and Happy are like “Fuck it, lets’ go now” and they drive off.
In Washington Tony is getting grilled by a guy named Senator Stern.
Stern sternly requests Tony turn over the Iron Man suit to the government.
And Tony is like “Nah”.
This is the whole theme of the movie.
Is Tony responsible enough to handle being Iron Man? Can he both balance the demands of being a superhero and those of his life as a company man? Is his power unchecked?
These are some basic ass superhero questions. All characters tackle these concepts at one point or another.
And its banal. Especially when you consider that Tony was supposed to be different.
He was supposed to be the gunslinger. Now we got to watch him go through the same problems that every other hero deals with?
He doesn’t even have a secret identity and he’s still got to put up with the “can he balance both worlds?” gimmick?
He rails against this, telling Senator Stern, he can’t have the suit because,
“The suit and I are one”.
So, the senator brings in Justin Hammer.
Hammer’s character is a douchier, whinier, less competent version of Tony Stark.
A cheap knock off. The same silky suit and glasses with the haircut and the bravado but none of the substance, snark or pizzazz.
He isn’t nearly as compelling a villain as he sounds.
For their finishing move, the Senate …
No, not that senate…
Summons Colonel James Rhodes.
Everybody makes a big deal about Rhodey’s entrance because it’s not Rhodey that walks in, it’s Don Cheadle. Cheadle makes his way down the isle and Tony gets up to great him, shaking his hand and telling him he didn’t know he was coming.
Cheadle Rhodes tells him,
“Look it’s me. I’m here. Deal with it. Let’s move on”
Tony responds with, “Alright, I’ll drop it”
Boom. Just like that. Casting swap.
Give them credit, it’s rather seamless. Have the characters verbalize the discussion going on in the audiences head,
“Hey who’s that guy?”
Address it.
“I’m here. This is what I look like now. Get over it”
Have you’re main character accept it. Move along.
Most people don’t even remember Terrence Howard as Rhodey. Now all they see is the Don.
Rhodes reads some out of context pieces from a report and shows some footage of what the air force believes to be Iron Man replicas from various other countries.
Tony hijacks the screens in teh room, plays a bunch of footage showing them they’re dummy bots and makes his exit.
“I’m your nuclear deterrent” he says.
“I have successfully privatized world peace”
Blood Toxicity 24%.
Back in the workshop, Jarvis tells Tony the use of the suit is accelerating the symptoms of the disease that is making him sick.
The arc reactor in Tony’s chest is slowly killing him.
The ticking time clock element lends to our feeling of sympathy and an understanding of Tony’s mental distress. We understand his desire to act out and do irrational stupid shit while everyone else just raves about him going mad or wonders what is going on with him.
It’s a trick writers will pull to garner our sympathy for a character. But in this case, it falls flat.
Tony acting out isn’t anything unusual. Him doing reckless stupid shit is just part of the regular routine. Now that it’s motivated by his slowly encroaching death doesn’t alter our perception of him.
It also serves to make the other characters in the film less likable. We are aware of Tony’s worsening condition while others are not. Those not in the know come across as less intelligent, emotionally shoved to the side because they aren’t in the loop the way we are.
You’ve alienated key characters, like Pepper, and done nothing to change the composition of your protagonist.
It doesn’t come as shock when Pepper is the one to tell Tony, in the next scene, that the Stark Expo is just his “ego gone crazy.”
Pepper remains Tony’s rock, a role she handles with admirable grace and efficacy.
Tony recognizes this, and makes her the CEO of Stark Industries (Enterprises. I swear it’s not me, they changed it. Whatever, you get the jist).
Pepper Potts now runs the company.
We cut to a training montage of Tony and Happy sparring in a ring.
Tony’s about to sign over the company to Pepper.
Enter the Black Widow.
It’s quite the entrance, and it sets us up for a character with more mystique than any other in the MCU.
Natasha Romanov (Natalie Rushman), delivers a quick ass whooping too Happy for his head ass comments about her martial arts training before orchestrating the transition of power and exiting in a cloud of awe.
We’re off to Monte Carlo, where Pepper is dealing with the uncomfortable fallout of being named CEO while Tony does his best to play protective husband. Happy is around with a distinguished looking brief case and Black Widow is getting them corner tables in fancy restaurants.
Elon Musk (Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat) makes a cameo and tells Tony about his plans for an electric jet.
Shout out to Elon Musk for squeezing into the MCU as the guy who designed the Quinn Jet.
Hammer shows up with Christine (the reporter that Pepper laid a smack down on from the first movie). The two of them try to play nice with Tony and Pepper, who are having absolutely none of it, and decide to demonstrate their combined wit for the two would be boot lickers.
The tandem make and impressive showing.
Tony heads to the bathroom.
Blood Toxicity 53%
He checks into the grand pris. Tells the guy driving the company car to shove it and joins the race.
Ivan (Mickey Rourke) saunters onto the track dressed up as a guy in a pit crew and starts slicing up race cars. Tony gets his demolished and Ivan heads towards him, warming up with a double-dutch routine.
Happy slams him into the barricade with his car.
Thrice.
And the dude just shakes it off (The fuck?).
Iron Man suit case suits up and dusts the fool.
Pretty concisely. He notes the tech and puts two and 2 together.
This guy made an arc reactor.
Hammer sees the whole thing on the television and likes what he watches go down.
After Tony and Ivan have a quick standoff in the cellblock he’s being held in Ivan tells Tony,
“You tried to re-write your own history”.
Hammer has Ivan broken out of prison and asks him to come work for him.
His pitch; don’t just walk up and kill the guy.
“You go after his legacy, that’s what you kill”
It’s pretty clear that Ivan is smarter than Hammer and that he’s the one in control. But Hammer just decides to ignore this fact and go along pretending he’s in charge.
Tony and Pepper deal with the fallout of Ivan’s “come at me bro” moment and discuss their next plans.
Tony wants to bail to Venice. Pepper talks him out of it.
Tony wants to take a break and re-charge.
“Not everyone runs on batteries Tony”, Pepper tells him.
Blood Toxicity 89%.
So Tony throws himself a birthday party. And he has a time. There’s a subtle transition after Pepper and Rhodey try and shut him down.
We go from watching RDJ DJ a party as Iron Man, shaking it on the dance floor and everything, to a sad, drunken, dying man play target practice in his home for the benefit of a bunch of enabling strangers.
Strange how much difference the score makes. Peppers horrified expression also helps.
Rhodey is fed up and opts to suit up to take control of the situation.
He tosses everyone out of the house and scraps Iron Man.
Not before Tony has the DJ drop a beat to beat his buddies ass too.
Queen: Another one bites the dust.
Still a beauty.
After the standoff, Tony’s house is wrecked and Rhodey peels with the Mark III.
He heads to an air force base. The military guys line up to oooh and ahh at the shiny new toy and giggle with delight at the opportunity to max it out.
Hammer is the guy they call to trick out the suit, but Rhodey swipes the arc reactor from its chest before Hammer can mess with it.
This shows Rhodey is still loyal to Tony and is thinking ahead, not willing to let his friends tech fall into the hands of his nemesis.
It also raises the question of what the suit was doing with an arc reactor in its chest to begin with.
Where did Rhodey get it? It wasn’t in the suit. The one in Tony’s chest powers the suit. There aren’t multiple arc reactors, that we know of, just lying around in this shop for anyone to plug into a suit and use. Or just walk away with.
What’s up with that?
Tony gets the hangover munchies and is told off by Nick Fury, who’s first official lines in the MCU are asking Tony Stark to get the fuck out of a giant donut.
Romanov is revealed to be Romanov and Fury chastises Tony for being such a mopey bitch. He asks how Rhodey got away with the suit, after Black Widow points out that Tony has safeguards installed to prevent randoms from using his tech.
Fury proposes this, he’ll give him a box of lithium dioxide to help take the edge off his symptoms and, “You can solve the riddle of your heart”.
Tony says no.
Fury drops off a box of Howard Starks old research, along with the knowledge bomb that Howard was a founding member of SHEILD, and heads to New Mexico to deal with Thor.
It’s not actually stated that way, Coleson and Fury just casually bring up that Stark isn’t the only thing on the agenda.
Tony tells Coleson to have fun in the land of the Enchanted when he leaves. Alluding to the magical nature of the Asgardian prince and his coming movie.
Expo Vid :
“I built this for you”
“What is and always will be, my greatest creation”
Further cementing the idea of legacy within this film. The idea of future generations building upon your past work. Reaping what you have sown.
We see this play out in the cases of Tony and Ivan. Both inherit the problems and powers of their fathers before them, both shaped by a past they played no part in, reconciling with the consequences in their own lives.
Ivan is the warning, Tony the shining example.
After a half assed and horribly executed apology to Pepper, Tony successfully executes some 3-D hologram problem solving and discovers a new element capable of powering his arc reactor without slowly poisoning him in the process.
Ivan phones him up for the classic, “Come at me bro” challenge chat and Tony suits up, heading to the Stark Expo where he believes Ivan will be waiting for him.
To kick off the Expo, Hammer dances to the stage like he’s on fucking Ellen and shows off the new line of Hammer drones Ivan has been building for him.
The piece de resistance is Rhodey in the War Machine armour, looking deadly.
Iron Man crashes his own party, centre stage, and it turns out Ivan saw that coming (duh). He configures the drones and Rhodey’s suit to attack Tony while everyone runs screaming for cover.
Romanov and Happy go after Ivan and Romanov tears through the building full of Hammer guards (Happy holds his own, respectively).
You’ve got to wonder why Hammers guards were so keen on blocking Black Widow from entry while Ivan hacked their bosses system and killed their two co-workers. They didn’t do anything to try and solve that problem.
After the battle throughout the Expo grounds its Tony and Rhodey versus Ivan in his Whiplash suit. It’s never called that, it’s never alluded to the way the Iron Monger suit was in the first one. But it’s the closest (I guess) resemblance the suit bares to any Iron Man bad guy in the comics so lets role with it.
Tony and Rhodey win. Concisely. Again.
Ivan tries the old, self-destruct routine but it doesn’t work.
It’s a dull climatic battle. The stakes are minimal, I never feel like the good guys are in any danger of losing. There isn’t any emotional weight, no metaphorical significance. Just a bunch of Hammer drones dropping like flies.
If any of those suckers had a modicum of integrity to their armour the fight would’ve been a lot tougher. Instead they fall victim to a serious case of storm trooper aim and the old Derrick Zoolander flaw of, “Can’t turn left”.
This movie just wasn’t as good. And like the majority of sequels, it wasn’t even good.
It’s a tough line to walk, expand on a character and their story while tying into the existing work and themes you’ve built previously. Being burdened with the additional MCU building elements doesn’t make the job any easier.
The legacy theme is….there ?
It doesn’t alter the context of the movie. It’s a motivator for the protagonist and antagonist.
I don’t know what else to say.
If you want a sequel, go watch The Dark Knight.
