Proof Positive: Iron Man 2

Saw Iron Man 2 today. Great movie! There. If all you need is a recommendation, go see it. If you stick around, there will be spoilers! Okay. You were warned.

Iron Man 2 takes up pretty much where the last movie left off. Tony Stark has announced to the world that he is Iron Man. The Fed'al Gubmint decides that they should have custody of his state of the art technology. He refuses. So the Fed'al Gubmint is after Tony, particularly in the form of a smarmy Senator, played by Garry Shandling. It also seems that Tony's dad may have stolen some ideas or credit from a Russian physicist, whose son builds his own weapon of mass destruction and comes gunning for Tony. Stark's weaselly business rival wants to come after him, isn't quite bright enough so he enables the bitter Russian mad scientist with WMD to go after Iron Man. And to top it off, Tony's secretary Pepper, who doesn't come right out and say it, is after Tony. Follow the man in the red and gold suit!

Oh, he's also being recruited by agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., who made a cameo in 1, a slightly bigger part in 2, and should play a prominent role in the sequel, which is pretty much guaranteed to be made. More on Nick Fury later. Scarlett Johanson, who is way overdue to be a Friday Night Babe, is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent planted at Stark Industries. (She fills out her role well!)

The movie plays well with Tony Stark's vulnerabilities. His heart (both literally and figuratively), his less than stellar relationship with his dad, friendship, loyalty and patriotism and the individual demons that still drive him.

With plenty of action and cliff hanging thrills, love, determination and a darned fine suit of armor conquers all!

From a technical standpoint, IM2 is superb. One of the problems I have with too many movies today, is that Computer Generated Images are used to produce the whizbang effects. Too many movies (Van Helsing and Hellboy, for example), I find it hard to care when one CGI is locked in mortal battle with another. It could be Ms. PacMan for all I care. Perhaps, aided in part by the fact that most of the characters are armored, the CGI effects are less noticeable. At any rate, it was no distraction here.

A couple of minor distractions: Product placement. I knew Dr. Pepper had a joint ad campaign with the movie. Still, when I saw the Dr. Pepper can in the foreground of a shot where no one was enjoying a nice cool beverage, it tended to pull me from the moment. Tony Stark drives an Audi, but that wasn't the only place I saw their logo. Every time I saw the Audi logo, I was momentarily pulled from the moment. And finally, Kodak must have shelled out a few bucks for product placement as well.

If you haven't watched it (or if you have, go watch it again) the first few seconds of the trailer above and you will see at least two Kodak signs. And when Nick Fury gives Tony some old home movies of his dad, guess whose logo is on the film canisters? (Slap yourself if you said "Fuji"!)

Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury

Geek alert! Finally, we come to the Nick Fury character. I'm not sure when it happened, but Nick is more amply endowed with melanin than he used to be! In the animated Avenger movies and now Iron Man, Nick Fury is a black man, but the original back story was that Sgt. Nick Fury of Sgt. Fury's Howling Commandos, was a white guy. And even though Commandos were British and Rangers were American, Sgt. Fury led his band of imaginary American commandos on numerous exploits during WWII, and later became an agent and director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Now I know that Lawrence Olivier played Othello and a woman played Starbuck, but this is a little like a remake of Star Trek with a redhead playing Uhura and an Irishman calling himself "Sulu".

I suppose one can get used to almost anything. Besides, I guess it beats the alternative!