Blockbuster season seems to come earlier and earlier every year, and 2010 begins in April (over a week before US audiences get it) with the sequel to Jon Favreau's enjoyable Iron Man.
Set 6 months after the end of the first movie we find Tony Stark (The always brilliant Robert Downey Jr.) opening the Stark Expo - a year long celebration of all things science (and ego), doing battle with the Government (Garry Shandling is brilliantly snide as a Senator who wants Stark to hand over the Iron Man 'weapon') and a rival mogul in Justin Hammer (another great performance from Sam Rockwell)
Stark also soon has to deal with the imposing Whiplash a Russian scientist avenging the shaming and deportation of his late father by Stark's late father. Whiplash (pictured above) played by the great Mickey Rourke in a well deserved return to big screen blockbusters. Who would have thought ten years ago Downey Jr. and Rourke would be 'co-headlining' a Summer event picture?
Iron Man 2 is in every way imaginable a step up from its predecessor. With the storyline and character building necessary to tell the audience the origins of the characters we got in the original, Iron Man 2 puts its foot to the floor and rarely lets up.
We also get more of Stark's friend Jim Rhodes (now played by Don Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard) who finally steps into his own suit: War Machine and there is a great sequence pitting the two friends together with explosive results.
As well as more antagonists this time around there are also more allies. Clark Gregg and Samuel L. Jackson return as Agent Coulson and Nick Fury from S.H.I.E.L.D. respectively, and Scarlett Johansson also appears as Stark's new secretary, but has a lot more to her than that...
Downey Jr. seems to have been born to play this role and is every bit as entertaining and tragic as he was in the original. From making you laugh out loud one minute, to make you feel for him as he drunkenly tells a room full of people how he manages to urinate in the Iron Man suit, he just nails everything and continues to show why he is one of the greatest actors of his generation. Superhero film or not.
Hopefully everything will continue to ride nicely along to 2012's Avengers movie with him intact. Would be a shame to see it go any other way. And talking of that - stay behind for another post credits sequence. Not as jaw dropping as Fury's appearance at the end of the first film but very, very cool none-the-less.
****
Turning everything to 11 and amping up the action - Iron Man 2 is an absolute blast and the best way possible to start Blockbuster season 2010.
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