Iron Man 2 (2010)

I liked it.

What I've been hearing on the Interwebz is that the movie tries to cram too many things in two hours, and that it's as bad as Spider-man 3.

I know I've been neglecting my blog and my reviews, and granted, this post is three-four weeks past opening night, which makes it TOO LATE. And so much for getting back in-game with Prince of Persia; I took my uncles out on Friday, went back to work on Saturday, and grocery-shopped on Sunday.

Hopefully I'll have better luck next weekend.

Anyway, back to Iron Man 2: It's not as bad as everyone says it is. At least, not as bad to warrant a comparison with S-M3, which was messy and unsatisfying in its own right, since S-M2 is like The Empire Strikes Back of all comic book movies.

But IM2 (Iron Man, not Ip Man haha) does suffer from overcrowding in terms of characters and plotline details. Scarlett Johansson is really unnecessary in this, even though she looks superhot in black latex/leather. I'm not a guy, so adding her in the movie didn't really do anything for me.

The only awesome scene in the entire movie is the racetrack scene, which, contrary to my belief that everything journalistic is super-hyped at times, is really, well, pretty awesome. It's a great introduction to the damage that Whiplash/Crimson Dynamo amalgamation Mickey Rourke can do, and in my book, destruction always looks good onscreen.

Which brings me to the downside of the film. The final fight scene.

In Iron Man, the fight between Tony and Warmonger lasted 7-10 minutes. In Iron Man 2, what has the potential to be the biggest, loudest, awesomest battle scene between Tony and Ultra-Whiplash and War Machine, ends in under just one minute.

Yes. One. Friggin'. Minute.

In place, we're given attempts to placate Pepper, his not-really-exciting discovery of a new element (which was not named, and Googling attempts have failed to give me a name for this new element), and a bunch of other unnecessary scenes that could've been cut out and replaced with a longer fight scene, because the way the film was going, Ivan Vanko is clearly more awesome Obadiah Stane.

As can be expected from Iron Man, the movie is absolutely hilarious, and the cast does a stand-up job. We get to see more of Jon Favreau in this, and although I'm not a fan of directors putting themselves in their movies (*cough*M Night*cough*), his scenes are pretty funny. Ditto for Garry Shandling, whose humor I've never been able to appreciate all these years.

Anyway, as with all Marvel films nowadays, there is a short scene after the end-credits, and even though it doesn't make movie history like the after-credits scene in Iron Man, it's a prelude to what Marvel has in store for us in 2011.

All in all, it was pretty good, even with the anti-climactic ending.