A sensational sequel

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Ben Wilson, Staff Writer
May 10, 2010
Filed under Entertainment

Of all the recent super hero movies, Iron Man has definitely been my favorite. Perhaps because of my like for technology, but in any case there was great concern that a sequel wouldn’t be able to fit the complex nature of Tony Stark’s personal life with the glamorous fight scenes we have come to expect and still find room for the S.H.I.E.L.D subplot hinted at the end of the first movie. Fortunately, it seems those concerns were unmerited.

Iron Man 2’s plot is multifaceted at best and schizophrenic at worst. To be fair, there is a lot to cover between Tony Stark’s complex personal life, his controversial public life, not to mention finding time to develop a new villain. And then S.H.I.E.L.D fits in somewhere as well. The movie tries to cover a lot and mostly succeeds, but it will likely take more than one viewing to sort out the various sub-plots and their details.

The movie opens with Tony Stark, brilliantly played by Robert Downey Jr., showing up both Justin Hammer and the US Senate with his proclamation that he has “privatized world peace.” The government is worried about the safety of having such technology in civilian hands. Tony dismisses such concerns with videos of other attempts around the world all failing miserably, and proudly contends everyone else is 20 years away from the technology.

What he doesn’t account for is Ivan Vanko, the highly interesting villain of the movie. He is the son of a Russian nuclear physicist who, we later learn, worked with Tony’s father on the Manhattan project. He is embittered against the Stark family after Howard Stark gets Ivan’s father deported from the country and sent to Russia. Ivan blames the family for their time spent in the gulags there, and vows revenge.

Despite the apparent successes, not all is well in the world of Tony Stark. His relationship with Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes is at an all-time low due to Stark’s irresponsible and usually inebriated use of the Iron Man suite while Rhodes is trying to keep the government off of Stark’s back.

Throughout all of this Tony is struggling with the arc reactor device he’s built to power the electromagnetic over his heart (for those who haven’t seen the first movie, an attack left him with lethal barbs near his heart, only prevented by an electromagnet on his chest). The device is powered by polonium, a highly radioactive substance that is slowly poisoning him.

His search for a replacement to the polonium core is a major theme in the movie, that ties into and is eventually resolved by his struggle to deal with the relationship between him and his dead father. While never close, he discovers that his father actually cared for him, and in doing so finds that Howard discovered a new element that would serve as a replacement core for the polonium.

Ivan Vanko, essentially a cross between whiplash and crimson dynamo, vowed revenge on the Stark family. Revenge takes the form of a modified version of the Iron Man suite featuring two large electrical whips that tend to slice through just about everything. His backstory is coherent and believable, and the time spent in the gulags does a good job explaining how he can take on professionally trained bodyguards with his bare hands.

Justin Hammer, a competitor to Stark’s in the business of building weapons breaks Ivan out of jail to build him Iron Man suits. Justin is one of the most obnoxious people I have ever seen, meaning the actor and scriptwriters did their job perfectly. He has as much ego as Tony but without either his humor or genius to excuse it.

Taken as a whole, the plot makes a great case for why super heroes should keep their identities secret, while clearly showing why Tony Stark’s ego would never let that happen. The way Tony’s personal life and deep character flaws inevitably intersect with the role he’s taken on as America’s protector cause endless problems for both him and his friend Rhodey.

As with all of these movies, it needs to be viewed with a substantial suspension of disbelief because, while plausible sounding scientific explanations are always provided for why the characters can do super human things, we all know its not actually true. Tony building a particle collider in his basement was a bit too extravagant. The level of precision required to operate those things isn’t even vaguely possible for one man to achieve in his basement. I suppose I ought to give them credit for at least realizing that you need a particle collider to make new elements. Overall impression: Great movie, can’t wait for the inevitable sequel.