Trailer for "Cowboys & Aliens"

Jon Favreau really deserves some credit, he managed to make a movie with a silly premise look very cool, plus is James Bond next to Indiana Jones, how can you go wrong?

Iron Man 2 Review

The advantage of a sequel for a superhero movie is that since you're no longer dealing with origin story of the main character, you can finally tell a story free of restrictions. The problem with a sequel of a superhero movie is that now you want to make things better, louder and flashier but more often than not it ends being hollow entertainment. It's called sequelitis, and "Iron Man 2" suffers it. Well that's not entirely true, since "Iron Man 2" is a fairly enjoyable movie, at times, but most of the time it's a mess, with too many characters and too many subplots to follow, which is weird considering that there's hardly a plot at all.

The story -what little there is- it's about Tony Stark being a complete jerk, and about way too many people after the Iron Man armor, from the US government lead by Senator Stern (Garry Shandling), to dumb-ass industrialist Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), to supervillain with daddy issues Ivan Danko, while Rhodey Rhodes (Don Cheadle) and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) try to bring some sense into Tony, who behaves like a spoiled teenager 90% of the film. Around the movie but barely in it are Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanov aka The Black Widow, and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, both of them also calling Stark out on his douchebaggery, and providing a nice nod to the upcoming "Avengers" movie, in fact we get a nod to "The Incredible Hulk", "Thor" and "Captain America", the last one taking place in a major scene, but oddly enough played for laughs, which takes me to the following point: Remember how much everybody liked the first film because of it's quirky sense of humor? That's in this movie too, except over 9000, and I don't mean that as a compliment, because if there's something "Iron Man 2" can be hold accountable of is of trying to damn hard, especially when it comes to the comedic parts of the movie, that rather than funny come across as annoying, something John Favreau is to blame for, not only in the directing aspect, but also in character aspect, as his Happy Hogan is guilty of three needless joke scenes.

What is also annoying is that they can't decided in which villain to focus, since we have to deal with both Danko and Hammer. None of them are well developed characters, Danko's motivations are his previously mentioned daddy issues as he feels his family was wronged by the Stark's and their legacy, while Hammer's motivations are money and his jealousy of Tony's mojo, he wants to be Tony Stark big time, and decides that the better way to achieve this is to finance Danko's evil scheme. It's real shame that Danko is such an underdeveloped character -although Mickey Rourke seems to be enjoying himself- as he could have been a cool and interesting villain to deal with. Ultimately is Tony who becomes not only his own worst enemy -with a shoe horned subplot of metal poisoning- but also the movie's enemy, it's really difficult to root for him when he keeps acting like an a-hole to friends and strangers alike. It's probably only Robert Downey Junior part charming part annoying performance that keeps the audience from hating him. Is that only Christopher Nolan knows how to correctly handle more than one villain in the same movie?

It may sound like I hated the movie, I didn't, I do believe it's an adequate movie and a good kick starter for the summer season, in fact my feelings for it are mostly the same to the ones I have for the fist film, I was never a big fan of it but I could understand why other people were. But "Iron Man 2"? Regular movie goers and fans of the character will undoubtedly like it, but don't expect an epic of epic epic epicness, because this ain't.

That "Avengers" movie better be good.


Rating:
From 1 to 5: 2.5