Iron Man 2 movie review

About the deviation:

I would have loved to draw a deviation for my "Iron Man 2" review, but then I already have so many reviews written that I haven't posted that I'll probably be doing more wallpapers like this. I was thinking about doing something fast and not very good as a place holder for when I actually draw a deviation but I really lucked out finding some really good images. I also wanted to write up my review while my memory of the movie was still fresh.

A google search led me to find the largest pics I could find. This image of Black Widow was the only one I could find that wasn't the half-image poster of Scarlett Johansson. I thought I was only going to be able to do a dual image of Black Widow and Iron Man, but with this one I was able to make her the center of the piece. The Iron Man image was from a IM2 poster and the War Machine image was a photo still from the first "Iron Man" movie.

Since the Black Widow image was very large and good quality it wasn't too much trouble separating it from it's background, which thankfully was mostly black (black makes everything easier to manipulate ). The Iron Man image was even easier to manipulate, I hardly had to do anything to it at all except reduce it in size to scale with War Machine. The War Machine image was actually in a bright setting so once I separated it from its background I airbrushed most of the edges black and shaded black some of the reflected colors on the armor that didn't match up with the rest of the image, trying to make it mirror the Iron Man image (in fact I did "flip" War Machine because he was facing the other way). I just grabbed a "2" from one of the thousands of promo images floating around to complete the wallpaper.

For visual effects all I did was add a little more brightness and glow to the Iron suits' eyes and chest. Nothing extra was needed for Ms. Johansson, she is her own best visual effect

Trailers:

Okay, I have to comment about the trailers they showed before the movie started. I still DON'T want to see the new Ridley Scott "Robin Hood". Say what you want about "Prince of Theives" but Kevin Costner's movie is still the best "Robin Hood" flick ever!! Sh*t, the "Prince of Thieves" trailer is still better than Russell Crowe's trailers, neither of which did little to get me excited in the first place (though Cate Blanchette looked very fine in armor, hehehe) .

Now the new movie from Steven Speilberg and JJ "Lens Flare" Abrams does look promising, but the teaser was just that, a big tease, so I'm probably going to forget about it until they come out with the first real trailer for it (did they even tell us the name of the movie?).

Now I'm a huge Avatar (f*ck you James Cameron for stealing the name!! ) fan and I was a little pissed at the casting; also see "whitewash", for "The Last Airbender" (but I'm still hoping it's a good movie). I mean, the only character who even resembles any of the original characters is Aang. But, dammit if I didn't love the new trailer! Seeing Appa flying in the opening shot gave me shivers and the rest of the trailer alleviated a lot of my concerns with the changes they may have done, which so far appears to be more cosmetic. You could pick out where each shot in the trailer came from during Book I: Water season. And the airbending is looking awesome. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending how picky you are about your 3D quality, it seems like it's going to get the same up conversion to 3D that "Clash of the Titans" did. Now if you've seen some of the Real 3D (pun!!!) movies from last year; "Monsters vs. Aliens" and "Avatar" and then saw "Clash of the Titans" then you know there is a big difference in filming in 3D and upconversion. For one thing "Clash of the Titans" didn't give me a headache like a real 3D movie does. Now I enjoyed Titans (which had little to do with the 3D) and only had to pay $2 extra for the 3D, so if "The Last Airbender" is a good movie, the almost 3D shouldn't hurt it.

Speaking of fine-ass babes (okay I was only thinking about it, but still, Gemma Arterton who was in "Clash of the Titans" was the first full-figure woman I've seen on screen in a long time. Between her and Scarlett Johansson, or as The CW would call them "fat chicks", it's a pretty good year at the movies ) "The Prince of Persia" is also looking good. Now the last "Prince of Persia" game I played was actually the first "Prince of Persia" game on the Commodore (if you young'ins don't know what that is google it ) but the trailer was pretty kick ass and I want to see it, if for no other reason than to see Ms. Arterton on screen again

Oh, and in non-trailer related news, I saw the Jonah Hex movie poster, and Megan Fox looked HOT!! . . . Yeah, that's it, I can't remember what the rest of the poster looks like


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Iron Man 2 movie review.

This review will contain spoilers so venture forth at your own peril
"YYYYYYEEEEEEEEAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"










Iron Man 2:

Now I loved the first movie. Like almost everyone I think I was just as surprised at how good it actually turned out to be. I've heard some people say that there wasn't a real villain (a constant antagonist throughout the movie) as if that's a real critisism and that a hero is only as good as the villain. I'm now convinced that's just some bullsh*t people say when they have dull (or boring) heroes or if their villain is played by someone way cooler (RIP Heath Ledger!) Robert Downey Jr. made Tony Stark and now Sherlock Holmes the coolest people in those movies.

Iron Man at best was a second tier hero in the Marvelverse (though Iron Man fans would most likely want to kick my ass for saying that, but that's cool ) compared to The Fantastic Four, Hulk, Captain America, and especially Spider-Man and X-Men, and the movies, due to no small part of Mr. Downey Jr. has elevated him into the same level as Spider-Man, Superman, and Batman (yeah, Dark Knight fanatics do need to chill a bit, James Cameron had already kicked Batman's ass twelve years ago with Titanic, stop blaming Avatar's success on 3D )

I really enjoyed "Iron Man 2". I'll probably have to wait until I see it again before I can say for certain if I like it more than the first movie. It's usually the newness of watching a sequel that sometimes make me prematurely proclaim it better than the previous. Some movies I know right away if they're the best, like "The Half-Blood Prince" or "The Dark Knight". But "Iron Man 2" will more than likely be the better of the two for me. Much like with Spider-Man 2 rather than clutter the movie with a whole slew of new characters, they focused on the ones they already have. Tony, Pepper, and Rhodey. They did bring in some new characters, most notably Mickey Rourke as the villian, but again, the real conflict was with the Tony Stark character with himself and how it effects the people around him. They upped Samuel L. Jackson's cameo as Nick Fury in the first movie with a . . . . bigger cameo, no doubt prepping for the Avengers movie. And then Scarlett Johansson I've always loved Scarlett Johansson ever since first seeing her in "Eight Legged Freaks", but this is the first movie I've wanted to see her in since "The Island" (please stop doing Woody Allen movies!!) I would kill to see a Black Widow movie, but seeing as how them Hollywood bitches can't get a Wonder Woman movie made (Bruce Timm and Lauren Montgomery have already shown you how to make a Wonder Woman movie!! How long are Superheroines going to keep paying for the double bombs of "Catwoman" and "Elektra", those movies bombed because they weren't good, not because they were women!!!) the most I can hope for is that she's in "The Avengers" movie, and even then she'll probably have to take a backseat to the boys.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. Also not surprising, they upped the action scenes, while they were bigger production-wise they didn't forget to make them better (okay, the battle with the iron drones was pretty big) a lot of times a sequel to a successful movie goes bigger without doing better ("Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" and all the non-Burton and non"Dark Knight" Batman movies, actually it was bad camerawork that ruined all the fight scenes in "Batman Begins", the Batmobile chase was the SH**!!!). The Iron Man-War Machine brawl was my favorite which didn't need any fancy camerawork.

As much as I liked Terrence Howard in the first movie, the only time I really missed him was when Don Cheadle (whom rather than try to replace Mr. Howard, stayed true to the character rather than try to make Rhodey "his own" which I thought was great) put on the War Machine outfit. Terrence Howard is so much taller than either Mr. Cheadle or Downey (who are about the same size) War Machine would have looked kick ass!

Gwenyth Paltrow gave another wonderful performance as Pepper Potts, with Rhodey getting more screen time it seemed to take away some of hers, but Pepper and Tony still have great chemistry together. Though it irked me a little that they seemed to make her a little more squeamish and scream a lot more than she did in the first movie, which is a little surprising considering what she went through in the first movie. I guess it was their way of having her give the company back to Tony but I don't think they had to make her character appear so weak to do it.

The only other thing that started to annoy me was Sam Rockwell's character. The first half of the movie he was fine, he was a great foil for Tony and he kept the plot going getting Mickey Rourke's character set up for the finale, but towards the end he started to come off a little too buffoonish. The true bad guy was always Mr. Rourke but you don't want the hero's adversary to be a complete idiot, it starts to become insulting after awhile. I mean, the first movie did just fine without any stupid people.

The only thing I can say about Black Widow was that I wish she had gotten more screen time. She really didn't have much to do. The trailers seemed to hint at a triangle between Tony, Widow, and Pepper, but that doesn't exist, or was cut out, in the movie. But Scarlett Johansson did well with what she had. She looked and moved great as Black Widow and she got the only non-CGI assisted fight scene in the whole movie. Seeing as how she's the first live-action superheroine to come along since Sue Richards I really want to see her in her own spotlight taking on real bad guys, not just nameless guards. And with all the Marvel related projects coming along there's certainly plenty of room for her character.

My thoughts on Mr. Rourke's performance is, like everyone else, who wasn't Robert Downey Jr. he doesn't get that much screen time. But he certainy works the time he does have and I love that his character isn't laden with exposition of why he's doing what he's doing. All you need to do is watch and you get it. That final confrontation he has with Iron Man and War Machine was really short, but only if you don't count the rest of the battle with the drones leading up to it.

Seeing how the movie ended we may be seeing more of Iron Man and Black Widow in an Avengers movie (and I hope she's in Iron Man 3). There really isn't much I can complain about, the issues I had with the movie don't completely ruin it for me and I'm certainly going to buy a 2 disc special edition (unless they want to be a@@holes about it and put all the extras exclusively on a Blu-Ray ) DVD.