More of the same nuclear-powered aerobatics from Favreau and Robert Downey Jr, with a few more gadgets thrown in and the titular hero acting even more of a tool than in the first film. In this, there's a presumptuous reliance on the audience finding Downey Jr. so charming with his tic-saturated lounge lizard routine that they forgive a lack of both character development and original plot. At least in
Iron Man, there was a stab at saying something about the arms industry in a geopolitical context. Here, it's just the nasty Government wanting to take Tony Stark's toys away, and Mickey Rourke as a growling Russian nemesis is never going to add anything, firstly because he's just a bag of Slavic 'you destroyed my father' stereotype villainy, and secondly because it seems that the only idea the scriptwriters can come up with for a baddie is a duplicate of the hero, only bigger and meaner, as with The Abomination in the 2008
Hulk film, the end result being lashings of collateral damage to eat up that big old CGI budget.
There's a brief glimmer of something diverting when Stark believes he's dying and starts acting progressively more stupid, but you just know that won't be allowed to last.
Oh, and they're making a third one too, if anyone still cares.
4/10
1 comment:
To be fair, it *does* have a political point to make, but it's a adolescent glibertarian sub-Randian Objectivist bullshit point.
Oh wait, that's what "the nasty government wants to take my toys away" means.
As you were!
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