"We're going for a ride!"

An armoured red-and-gold figure stands braced, powerful, ready, as the hatch of a cargo plane opens to reveal the city far below.  Three clanking strides, a leap, and Iron Man is airborne, free falling into the night. 

A burst of energy from boots and gauntlets accelerates the gleaming form into the lights below as explosions set the night on fire.  A gout of flame momentarily hammers back the metallic flyer, who quickly recovers and continues his descent, which climaxes with his impact on a circular platform.

And then - dancing girls, rock and roll, lights, fireworks and cheering crowds of fans who scream in ecstacy as drone arms emerge from the rotating stage and disassemble the cybernetic armour to reveal a grinning Tony Stark.

As the music fades and the dancers leave the stage, he spreads his arms in acceptance of the cheers, and says:

"Oh, it's good to be back!"

Welcome to Iron Man 2.  

Sequels are always difficult. Film makers are faced with the challenge of attempting to repeat their success without repeating it too closely, while realizing that whatever they do it will be compared to their first production.  On that basis, how does Iron Man 2 score?

Personally, I found that it scored very well, although it suffers from a peculiar problem that seems to characterize a lot of comic book adaptations.

The best part about the character of Anthony Stark is that the writers have made him so marvelously erratic and spontaneous in his genius, giving him a humour that I don't recall ever seeing in the comic book character. Full points must be given, once again, to Robert Downey Jr.  If he did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him solely so that he could play the role of Tony Stark.

Surprisingly, Mickey Rourke almost matches Downey's star turn.  His portrayal of the villainous Ivan Vanko is an impressive creation, one into which Rourke throws himself completely. Long term fans may be a bit confused by Vanko, who is a combination of two characters from the comics: the original Whiplash and the Crimson Dynamo, an armoured Russian equivalent of Iron Man.

On the down side, I still can't get behind Gwyneth Paltrow as the love interest, and although Don Cheadle is an improvement over Terrence Howard from the first film*, I'd like to see someone with a bit more attitude in the role. I still think Gary Dourdan from CSI would be a good choice, let's try him for Iron Man 3, shall we?

 

One of the few things that I didn't like about the plot of the first movie was that the dice in the climactic battle were so loaded against Iron Man that it really wasn't a fight.  What I wanted to see was Iron Man winning against the odds because he's just so much better at this than his opponents.  Iron Man 2 gave me that experience, although in this case Iron Man shares the spotlight with the War Machine armour, the provenance of which has been changed somewhat from the comic book version.

Okay, all this sounds fairly positive - what "peculiar problem" does Iron Man 2 share with other comic adaptations? 

For no good reason that I can imagine, writers have found it necessary to double or triple up on major characters from the comic versions, creating movies that are just a little bit too busy - or perhaps "wasteful" is the word I want.   (Spiderman 3 and most of the Batman movies share this problem.) 

Scarlett Johansson certainly shows well as the Black Widow (although they never refer to her by that name), and rival industrialist mastermind Justin Hammer loses a few decades and most of his dignity in Sam Rockwell's version of the character. However, with the inclusion of Vanko, Hammer and the Widow, Iron Man 2 is loaded up with two major villains from the comic, an ambivalent love interest/major villain/reformed villain, while keeping Nick Fury involved in the plot - oh, and did I mention the War Machine?  I know that the history of Iron Man as a comic book character dates back to 1963, which offers a rich vein of material to mine for movie adaptations, but let's go easy, people. You could have made three movies with this many characters, it's more than a bit crowded for a two-hour story.

Not to mention all the damn hints about the upcoming Thor, Captain America and Avengers movies…

But really, these are minor issues, and for the most part I found Iron Man 2 to be an excellent followup to the first movie.  However, for me the sad part, the unbelievable part, was when Tony Stark boasts that with the Iron Man armour he has successfully privatized world peace.  It seems terribly naive, and somehow terribly American, to suggest that all the tension, all the anger, all the animosity and hatred in the world, could be completely eliminated by one man in a flying red-and-gold tin can.

- Sid

*A store window mannequin would have been an improvement over Terrence Howard, if you ask me.

Strength in Numbers.

Damn it, I missed Towel Day again. I had it marked on the calendar and everything, but somehow it completely slipped through the cracks until Dave, the training supervisor at work who is also a science fiction fan, burst into the office with a loud "Happy Towel Day, everyone!"

At least I can take small comfort in being the only person who knew what in the hell he was talking about - although admittedly, not everyone would find that a reason to be comforted.

- Sid

Housekeeping.

Over the three and a half years that I've been doing this blog, a few things have changed.  Blogger itself has added some features, and, to be honest, I've figured out how to do some things in the editing phase that I didn't realize I could do.  I've also recently added the little atomic swirl that I've been using as a marker at the end of posts.

However, this creates a bit of a dilemma for me.  Traditionally, I feel that when something is finished, it's finished.  As an example, I would like nothing more than for George Lucas to stop messing about with the Star Wars movies - yes George, it's wonderful that you have more money and better special effects capabilities, but I think that in their original form those movies represent a particular vision, a vision that was created using the tools available at that time.  I'm also not impressed by the remastered episodes of the original Star Trek that have started getting into circulation, the ones where the special effects shots of spaceships, planets, and so forth have been recreated to match current state of the art.  (And that stand out like sore thumbs compared to the other footage as a result.)

On the other hand, I am a big fan of consistency in documents, and it niggles at me that everything doesn't match up over time. I've also learned some little tricks that I think just make the postings look a bit nicer (it was surprisingly tricky to convince the HTML editor to put a space between the title and a picture).

So, here's the question: is it acceptable for me to go back and make changes to pictures, post videos, and add my little logo?  Or would I be making the same sort of egotistical mistake that's represented by all those director's cut DVDs?

- Sid