Review: Iron Man 2

So the 2010 summer movie season is upon us once again. I only saw two movies so far, but hope to see more as they come along. Here are my reviews on the two already seen:

Iron Man 2

*WARNING* Spoilers ahead and some stuff from Wikipedia

As you might think already, I love the Marvel movies so far. Tony Stark revealing his identity as Iron Man at the end of the first film was a curve-ball I didn't see coming. The post-credits scene at the end was another, with Samuel L. "Snakes on a Plane" Jackson as Nick Fury, a character who, in the Marvel Ultimate comic book continuity is BASED ON HIS APPEARANCE. Major plus.

Roles include: Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan, Tony's bodyguard and chauffeur. Paul Bettany returns as JARVIS' voice, and Phil Coulson's back and played by the same guy.The only person replacing the previous is Don Cheatle as Rhodey, which is a slight improvement from Terrence Howard. Stan Lee has a cameo, but Tony mistakes him AGAIN, this time as Larry King. A bit of real-world flavor is added in by Christiane Amanpour and Bill O'Reilly. The late great DJ AM has a cameo as well, and the film is dedicated in his memory.

The new film is set six months after the first, with Stark now being brought in by the US government about the Iron Man armor (Senator Stern played by Garry Shandling is a nice touch). Stark refuses to turn over the suit, claiming that his competitors are years away from successfully recreating it, with humorous test videos adding an exclamation point to the statement.

We then find out that Tony's slowly being poisoned by the core in his arc reactor (oh, the irony). Because of this, he appoints Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) as the CEO of his namesake business, and fills Potts' former position as his personal assistant with a hot number named Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson).

He then tries for Semi-suicide at the Circuit de Monaco, where he's almost killed by one PO'd guy named Ivan Vanko (played by the coming-back Mickey Rourke), who has an arc reactor and a suit of his own, along with whip-like energy weapons. However, Stark defeats Vanko with the aid of a new portable briefcase armor (hearkening back to some comics and the '90s cartoon). Afterward, Stark learns that Ivan is the son of his father Howard's (John Slattery) old partner, Anton Vanko, who collaborated with Howard on the first arc reactor but was deported to the Soviets following his attempts to cash in on the technology and died in poverty. Ivan blames the two for his family's fate, and seeks revenge. Rival weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer (played nicely by Sam Rockwell) has Vanko broken out of jail - by way of faking Vanko's death - and recruits him to perfect a line of armored combat units to upstage Stark at his own Expo. However, things go sour between Hammer and Vanko when Vanko, instead of building armored suits like Hammer wanted, instead builds a series of military drones for an unknown purpose.

So there, one-half of the movie's plot for you. I think that's all I need to get you guys to know that this is a hell of a film. If not, here's one: Scarlett's character is a spy from S.H.I.E.L.D. and wears a bad-ass jumpsuit later in the movie. That must have increased male movie-goers by the double-digits. If you bought a ticket, it should have been a good time. If you didn't, go see it in theaters or buy the DVD or Blu-ray Disc.

Although there are a lot of new characters and some flying plot threads in this film, but everyone's performance was rock-solid and the action was comfortably packed in.

Rating: Four out of five popcorn kernels