The Marvelous Marvel Rewatch (Now Playing: Avengers: Infinity War)

[Alara317]

I'm roaring through these movies, and I just finished Iron Man 2.

All through it, I was rehearsing my criticisms in my head. I know it's generally considered to be one of the weakest in the MCU, the weakest of the Iron Man Movies, and not a particualrly great film...but after watching it I'm having a very hard time finding faults.

"Whiplash was poor" Not really. He was motivated, intelligent, and menacing when he needed to be, but the issue is that he wasn't the focus of the movie. This film was very clearly not about whiplash, but about Iron Man. or, more specifically, about Tony Stark.

See, the real reason I think people don't like this film is because it's not an action movie with character, it's a character piece with action. The focus is that Tony is struggling with mortality, he's having trouble fighting his demons, he has self-destructive tendencies, and it's slowly destroying his life. he has pushed people away, he's pissed off the government, and he's caring less and less. You could take out all of the action sequences, and I honestly think it'd be ALMOST as good as Logan, because then people would understand the focus of the film.

The marvel movies have always been about heroes first and villains second, which can be a legitimate gripe, but I think that - especially with Iron Man 2 - it makes sense, because Tony was more interesting than Ivan.

But honestly, I think Ivan was a great character, played very well by Mickey Rourke, and he served his purpose. He was not the primary antagonist, Tony was. Ivan was just another factor in Tony's burgeoning maturity. Between the government, Hammer, Whiplash, Pepper Potts, and Rhodes all sort of ganging up on him, he had to get his shit together.

I found that quite compelling.

Plus, I like how they slowly built the world around him. SHIELD got some love, nick Fury got some love, Black Widow got some love, and Coulson got some love. yeah, I guess you could complain that they focused too much on world building, but again I think that it's a bit misguided. People went to this film thinking it was gonna be super actiony and build on Iron Man by giving us something more dangerous and menacing.

Funny enough, I think they DID do that...but they still focused on Tony.

All through the film I was trying to find those flaws that I could use to mark it down. I was trying to internally convince myself that Vanko was a poorly utilized villain, or that it didn't have enough action, or that it focused on world building. While you could argue all of those points (any many do), I think they all miss the point of the film.

Iron Man 2 is a character study, a dissection of a man with self destructive behavior in the guise of a superhero action movie. I think people come at this from the wrong angle, and that once you come at it from the right angle, it succeeds on virtually every level.

I want to do pros and cons, but I honestly don't find any cons, and trust me, I tried. While it's character arcs aren't QUITE as good as Iron Man 1 in acts 1 and 2, I did enjoy act 3 more. I'm putting this just a hair below Iron Man 1 overall.

8.9/10

Rankings so far:

9.0 Iron Man
8.9 Iron Man 2
6.1 The Incredible Hulk