Iron Man 2 (Review Part 2 of 2)

Iron Man 2 (Review Part 2 of 2)

The Special Effects

This time around the special effects are much improved over some of the shots in the first film. That’s not saying the first film had horrible effects, they were very impressive at the time. ILM did an outstanding job with the new armor of War Machine, giving it a completely different look and feel from Tony’s armor.

The fighting is a little bit more frantic than the first film. This is one of IM2’s better aspects. I only had a problem with the placement of heads on CGI models. That is only a minor gripe.

The Score

This time around John Debney composed the music for IM2. Unlike Ramin Djawadi, the composer for the first movie, Debney’s score sounds more like a super hero score. Djawadi used a great deal of rock guitar in his score, but you only get hints of it in Debney’s score.

I believe this score is leaps ahead of the lackluster first score. Jon Favreau has defended the heavy rock tones of the first film, but he hasn’t really explained why he changed to a different tone for this film.

The Overall Movie

While watching the movie, I felt there was something missing. Gone are the snappy one-liners and funny moments. In many ways, Iron Man 2 is more like The Dark Knight than IM1. I enjoyed some of the darker portions of the movie, but I think there needed to sharper/lighter dialogue to balance out the serious stuff.

The third act is an impressive action set piece with different things going on at the same time. Heck, even Jon Favreau gets his own action scene.

While this movie isn’t as fun as the first film, it does set the ball rolling for the Marvel Movie Universe. You can clearly tell that there are bigger things brewing in the universe that will set us up for the Avengers movie.

Iron Man 2 isn’t as good as the first one, but it is certainly better than some many super hero movies of late.

Grade: B-

-Garry Shandling is very funny, but man he’s gotten big.

-Samuel L. Jackson is pretty amusing as Nick Fury

-I love the War Machine design and the weapons.

The Wrestler II: He’s been upgraded.

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Sam Jackson: “The eye-patch says BMF on it, Stark.”
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Note: As far as I can tell, this scene is not in the movie.

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