The quick rundown is I liked it. Wasn’t horrible wasn’t the greatest super hero movie ever but worth my 7 bucks or whatever movies are now. I think there are maybe 2 types of people who won’t like this flick, people who are super hardcore Iron Man fans and people who are super movie aficionados.

Spoilers Below

They do kind of have a lot of stuff going on in this movie but I only actually think one thing was  unnecessary. The part where he’s being poisoned by the arc reactor seemed like a way just to pull in random elements and it was resolved in such a quick manner it seems to almost downplay how severe that condition actually was.

Stories they played:

  • Arc reactor poisoning
  • Russian guy hatred
  • Hammer hatred
  • CEO change
  • Father hates me
  • Building War Machine
  • Scarlett Johansson spy
  • US wants Iron Man
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. recruitement

A lot of those things are linked together but I guess the overall feeling after watching it is that the pacing is so fast and the story is only weakly held together that it feels like you’re just running from scene to scene. The bit with recruiting for S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers is so weird since Iron Man is a part of that team and it doesn’t seem like he’s reluctant to join in the continuities I’ve read/watched. The post credits part wasn’t as big as a reveal or teaser as much as I would have liked though.

Ok anyway, that’s the bad stuff. It had great action scenes. The racetrack at Monaco was incredible. Rhode vs Stark was cool, Black Widow infiltrating Hammer Industries was totally great and the final action sequence was also very cool. The final battle was short but at the same time an event happens where you think “He should have done that first” and then the final battle pops up and it resolves rapidly so you think “Oh well ok I was hoping for more action but then again I just said he should have done this thing first to end it fast so I guess I see what happens when I get what I ask for.”

I hear Iron Man 3 might have Mandarin in it which might be really wild since he’s basically a crazy Chinese guy with 10 rings from an alien race that grant him totally incredible powers practically through magic. So I’m not so sure how they’ll make it more believable for live action. Hopefully IM3 is a much more focused story keeping all the action from IM2.