Iron Man 2 was a big pile of shit.

Spoilers ahead, not that they matter... not that the story can be ruined any further. Here's the trailer (because it matters):



Talking to some friends of mine who actually read comics, this is what we thought the plot was going to be:

Tony Stark has become addicted to the suit. The power grants him, the freedom it bestows. So he begins integrating his biology further and further with its technology. In the comics, he has this Extremis armor that utilizes nano machines to create a direct interface between his nervous system and the suit. That new triangular-chested armor relates to the Extremis interface. In the trailer we see these techno-patterns in his skin appearing around his power core, spreading throughout his body. The more of a cyborg he becomes, the more his humanity is compromised.

And the secondary plot would revolve around the spread of power-suit style weapons across the globe, the implications thereof.

Well... we got the second part right. Not that the movie actually resolved that point or anything. That first part? We were totally wrong.

Here's a breakdown of the plot, in no particular order:

- Tony Stark has palladium poisoning because that's what fuels his power core. For some reason, it manifests as techno scribbles in his skin. He is dying and needs some solution for this problem.

- Nick Fury... well, Sam Jackson as Sam Jackson playing Nick Fury (a character we don't really understand within the logic of the film's universe, made absolutely worthless by his two dimensionality), tells Tony Stark that his dad, Howard Stark, actually loved the shit out of him and had some secret formula conveniently stashed somewhere that'd save Tony's ass. It ends up being in some fucking model that, for some reason, is in Pepper's office. Tony proceeds to synthesize a new element for his power core by lasering the shit out of his lab (for no reason... dude, aim the thing first on lower power, then notch it up) and firing it at some crystal thing that made a triangular circuit. New triangle suit! With no obvious upgrade other than not killing our hero... which wasn't even a side effect alluded to in the first movie.

- Also: terrible writing. TERRIBLE. Here's the thing about sci-fi: if you're not a physicist or you just plain haven't done your research, don't explain things. There's a reason why we have that scrappy hero paradigm in sci-fi and fantasy fiction; Luke Skywalker knows as little about the Empire as we do and so we learn along with him. Hell, we learn through him, we learn what he needs to know as he comes across it. Luke doesn't care how a warp drive works, so a few words like "parsecs" are dropped (and not even safely, mind you, people still bitch about that one) and we buy it. Tony Stark rambling endlessly and doing a bunch of shit that makes no sense to any reasonably educated viewer derails the immersiveness of the film and shows the ineptitude of the screenwriters.

- Mickey Rourke is actually a pretty fun character and does a cool job... though his final battle with Iron Man and War Machine sucks pretty bad. I don't care about our two heroes fighting computer controlled robo-chodes, they're not characters, they've got no dramatic weight to them. I want to see an epic fucking battle, but just like the first movie, they blew it. Bullshit copout too... I don't really understand why repulsers do that. Also his tentacles cut through everything but heroes.

The script just plain subverts some of the most basic standards of decent writing. What are the emotional stakes? Why am I invested? What's going on? Shit, they had it under control for the first third and then it just devolved into a big pile of garbage. Lots of bad ideas, lots of wasted potential. Some cool graphics though.