If they're good enough for the Energizer Bunny...
Some movies just don’t hold up well to repeated viewing.
Last week my husband and I re-watched Iron Man 2 and Star Trek (2009). We’ve seen both at least three times already, and of the two, Star Trek holds up much better. (My only beef with Trek is depiction of Kirk’s birth, specifically the fact that technology has given us warp drives, and yet human childbirth is still a hideous, painful process.)
I had heard some negative buzz about Iron Man 2 before I watched the movie, so my expectations were low. Afterward, I thought, “Well, that wasn’t so bad.” Why didn’t I notice its flaws? Blame Robert Downey Jr.
I’m still amazed that the studio chose him for the role rather than some vapid pretty boy (e.g. Ryan Reynolds in Green Lantern). In retrospect, Downey is the perfect actor for a movie with the premise “billionaire genius playboy stumbles upon a conscience and decides to wage peace, not war.” Imagine if the role had been played by some earnest twenty-year-old hunk. Instead of being believable, Tony Stark’s transformation would have read “dumb ass, naive kid goes hippie.” Nope, you need an actor with some miles on him for the role. More importantly, you need someone with the acting chops to impart a combination of arrogance and self-deprecation to the part. Hence, the brilliance of casting Robert Downey Jr.
At this point, I’ll note that Iron Man 2, unlike Cowboys and Aliens, is a fun movie. Sam Rockwell is perfect for the role of completely self-absorbed and un-self-aware Justin Hammer. Scarlett Johansson, aka Natalie Rushman, doesn’t really have much to do, but damn, does she look good doing it. I liked Terrance Howard as Rhodey, but Don Cheadle is a more than adequate substitution. And Mickey Roarke? Mickey Roarke looks like he wandered straight off the set of The Expendables (or vice versa), but give him a break. He spent several years in a Russian gulag.
Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts is still an amusing foil to Stark, except for the screaming. Yeah, the screaming. In the Iron Man, she was wonderfully scream-free, even when confronted with Obediah Stane’s Iron Monger. In Iron Man 2, Pepper sometimes channels Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) from Spiderman, dissolving into shrieking female hysterics. Somewhere between the first movie and the second, the writers decided that Pepper wouldn’t be perceived as feminine unless she went off like a fire alarm at the slightest sign of danger.
Though still fast moving and full of action, Iron Man 2’s plot is a lot flabbier, and the characterization (yep, me and characterization) lacks the original’s internal consistency.
But my biggest gripe with the movie is really just a nitpick that grew into a constant refrain in my head. If the palladium-based arc reactor in Tony’s chest is poisoning him, why doesn’t he just take it out and replace it with a supped-up car battery? In the cave, when he tells Yinsen how much power the thing can generate, Yinsen observes that it could run Tony’s heart for hundreds of lifetimes. Tony agrees and adds, “Or power something big for a few minutes.” Okay, so we know why he needs it at that moment in time. Hauling around a car battery is inconvenient and the Iron Man suit is a little more energy consumptive than a mini-van.
Once Tony is back in civilization, however, it seems he might be able to get the shrapnel removed. The idea of a life-altering chest wound is part of the Iron Man’s canon. In one version, the shrapnel can’t be removed because removing it will kill him. He wears a magnetic chest piece that must be recharged regularly, under his armor to stay alive. The problem is eventually treated with a heart transplant.
In another version of canon, the cybernetic connection to the suit is what poisons him. This makes much more sense, insomuch as the poison angle goes, because he requires the link to work the suit.
The movie version fails because the arc reactor doesn’t have to reside in his body. The arc reactors in Jebediah Stain and Ivan Vanko’s suits are contained within their armor, not their body. As Yinsen noted in the cave, the arc reactor provides way more juice than necessary to run Tony’s heart. The great Tony Stark, he who built a teeny arc reactor in a cave and manufactured an entire new element, should be able to come up with a safe battery for his heart.
So every time Tony swooned and then sucked down another green milkshake, I thought, “Slap some AA batteries in your chest and get on with saving the world already.”
