[Analysis] Iron Man 2 [Spoilers]
Hello!
This time I’m writing about the third film in the MCU, Iron Man 2!
*Note:
These are impressions and analysis written on the assumption the film has already been seen, so there are spoilers.
Iron Man 2
All the other Marvel posts are here!!
https://movie-paradise-blog.com/category/marvel/
The review of the first film is here
So — released two years after the first one.
CG had come a long way in that time, and plenty of fans were counting down to this one.
Recasting Rhodey, Tony’s best friend, did make things feel a bit uneasy back then — though looking back now it’s just a fond memory.
Rhodey can only be Don Cheadle.
Let’s get into it!
Russians watching Tony’s speech.
Stereotypes about Russians: vodka, snow, that sort of thing.
And thanks to the Cold War, it feels like the enemies of America — the old, long-standing ones especially — are almost always Russian.
And there it is: the blueprint for the Arc Reactor, the very heart of Iron Man. What on earth is going on there?
Seems he likes a flashy production.
In Captain America: The First Avenger, Tony’s father runs an Expo of his own.
The staging is similar too lol
Spotted Stan Lee in the crowd.
Just like “I have a bad feeling about this” in Star Wars, Stan Lee turns up for a quick cameo in every single one.
Enter Justin Hammer, one of this film’s villains(?).
In the comics he’s genuinely formidable, but here he’s just a buffoon… lol
But the threat he keeps warning about turns out to be exactly right in hindsight.
If someone else had been the one to say it, it might have carried real weight.
Tony at the Senate hearing.
Is Iron Man private property, or does he belong to the state?
Right. The same question comes back around in Civil War.
Here Tony chooses to stay private, and in Civil War he chooses the state.
Tony really did change.
By the way, the senator also shows up in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
One of the film’s themes.
Keep being a hero and you die.
He puts that question to himself in the mirror, and by the end it’s his father who resolves it.
Asking a self that carries his father’s face, and being saved by his father lol
That mirror scene really matters.
Pepper, suddenly named CEO.
Tony says nothing about the reactor problem, and friction builds between the two of them.
And there’s Black Widow! lol
The AI robot arms living in Tony’s house, Dum-E and U.
He treats them pretty roughly a lot of the time, but when the house is destroyed in Iron Man 3 he carries them out with him — there’s real affection in those scenes.
Must be nice, Tony.
Enter the main villain, Ivan Vanko.
A whip user who cuts through anything.
In the comics he goes by the name Whiplash.
Here he reads more Mexican than anything, but he is technically Russian lol
A sharp-minded enemy, and physically above Tony as well, which made life very hard for him.
Even this early on they had a suit built around the idea of carrying it with you.
The weak point is how thin the armour is.
Against Ivan it was far too badly outmatched lol
That suit-up scene never gets old lol
Same as in Ant-Man — the Starks keep getting called thieves lol
And the reason is always something along the lines of stolen technology lol
Mostly it’s the father, Howard Stark, who did the stealing lol
The arms-dealer past that follows him everywhere.
In the films after this one the focus shifts away from the arms dealing and onto the people who died because of his hero work.
Hmm… always getting blamed. Poor guy.
Him just honestly saying he doesn’t want to go home is lovely.
Tony’s real feelings coming out.
Socially finished, and staring down death by reactor. In that hopeless corner, what Tony does isn’t the thing he actually wants — going absolutely wild at a party!!!! — it’s engineering things so that Rhodey and Pepper will abandon him…
Watching it again, War Machine is properly cool lol
“Become a war machine”
being
where “War Machine”
comes from is a fun detail too lol
Director Fury, of course.
Tony’s scheme is completely transparent to him.
He winds up the self-destructing Tony in that jokey, clowning way of his.
Here it’s revealed that his father Howard was a founding member of the secret organisation S.H.I.E.L.D.
And Fury flips out of the clowning into serious mode — or rather, into who he actually is.
He calls him “Howard,” first name, so the two of them must have been close.
When he’s giving Tony a proper talking-to he sounds exactly like a father. I cried.
Cuba lol
Relations between Cuba and the US have been pretty unstable.
Which is why Cuban cigars, hard to get hold of on top of everything else, have become a byword for the very finest.
That diagram!!!!
It’s a schematic of the fourth dimension!!!
Captain America: The First Avenger makes it explicit too — Howard had been researching the Tesseract all along.
Ohhh, that message from his father…
So good, aaahhh
That expression on Tony’s face!
Wonderful acting!!
Whatever the feud between them was in the past, the bad blood is gone now.
His love for his father deepens because of it, which is exactly how we end up with what happens in Civil War…
I’ve never touched theoretical physics, so I don’t really follow it, but apparently simply arranging protons and the like isn’t enough on its own.
It takes an enormous amount of calculation, and the new elements that come out of it apparently only exist for a few microseconds inside a particle accelerator.
The element created here is Badassium, not Vibranium.
Because vibranium already turns up in Captain America: The First Avenger lol
What’s amazing about Tony is that he just goes and does everything on his own.
Socially speaking, teamwork is probably the better answer lol
Working alone suits me too.
A knock-off Captain America shield lol
Why it’s there becomes clear right at the end.
Americans love a particle accelerator, don’t they.
Same here.
Full of romance, and they genuinely exist!!!
That lol
In films a trace always looks slow, and supposedly that’s to keep the criminal off guard while in reality it’s instant — wonder if that’s actually true.
Did you know the US military is made up of five branches: [Navy, Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps]?
The outfit that investigates crimes involving Marine Corps and Navy personnel is NCIS, the military’s own police force, and the show built on it — NCIS — comes very highly recommended.
It’s the most popular drama in America.
A furious Black Widow rampage, and then the Iron Man pair tearing through everything.
The way this stretch is shot in particular points straight ahead to Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Pushing in, pulling back — the impact is enormous.
Could have watched a lot more of it, honestly lol
Also, Ivan goes down way too easily lol
Hold out a bit longer!!!!!
For all his appearance he was a serious opponent, so killing him off didn’t feel necessary.
And they all lived happily ever after.
Justin Hammer?
Next thing you know, he’s under arrest.
The Avengers Initiative looks like it’s finally reaching the sharp end.
But the assessment of Tony is lukewarm.
Everyone is so hard on Tony lol
Nicely ironic.
And there, at the end of Coulson’s line of sight: Mjolnir.
Next time, on to Thor.
