Throwback: Iron Man 2

As much as I love the character of Iron Man and I believe Robert Downey Jr is PERFECT, Iron Man 2 has to be my least favourite movie in the MCU by far. Judging the film based on reviews, it's the 3rd lowest in the MCU above The Incredible Hulk and Thor: The Dark World (The Dark World may not be the best but I personally think it's a lot better than IM2). It scores higher than other comic book movies such as The Wolverine and The Amazing Spider-Man, so as a bad Marvel movie it's still not counted as a bad movie.

This movie like all comic book movies is different to the comics. It focuses on two plots from the comics, the first arc being "Demon in a bottle" which is when Tony struggles with alcoholism and the second is "Armor Wars" where others try duplicating the Iron Man suit. The changes we saw to these arcs in the movie was that instead of alcoholism Tony suffers from poisoning due to his arc reactor, the second was although other nations attempt to recreate the suit, they all fail until Ivan Vanko creates the first Whiplash suit.

Although Iron Man 2 was the kickstarter to the rest of the MCU and was trying to set up future movies without losing its own plot line (i'm looking at you Batman vs Superman). Although there are more elements in this film focused towards expanding the MCU compared to others in the universe. It mainly prepares for The Avengers, as Nick Fury, Phil Coulson and Black Widow a.k.a. Natasha Romanoff appear, and Tony also refers to Fury's "Super-Secret Boy Band". I personally don't tend to include Black Widows appearance as a pivotal point in her character arc, although its a good introduction, in this film she's mainly used as eye candy but in other MCU movies you can see she's much more intelligent than her Iron Man 2 portrayal.

There are also references to Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger as Coulson leaves for New Mexico during the movie. Also as Tony is trying to figure out the new element there is a diagram of the Tesseract, which houses the Space Gem and is seen in Captain America and The Avengers. These references don't over shadow the main plot luckily as they are small easter eggs.

As expected, Robert Downey Jr does a fantastic job portraying Tony's self destruction and other struggles. I also think his on-screen chemistry with Don Cheadle as Rodey is far better than Terrence Howard's portrayal. My personal quip with the acting in the film is the casting of Mickey Rourke as Whiplash, it just feels like they just hired him for the name instead of getting a lesser known person who could actually act. I also didn't enjoy the final action sequence with Iron Man and War Machine teaming up I felt it wasn't as innovative as other fight sequences Marvel have created.

Easter Eggs

#1 Cap's Shield

Back in the first Iron Man film we got to see Captain America's shield sitting on Tony's desk in the background, the easter egg for Captain America in this film was much more obvious. Coulson picks up the shield and starts asking questions then Tony ends up using it to help level out what he was working on by shoving the shield under it.

#2 Fin Fang Foom

This one is barely noticeable and I didn't see it till my third time watching it. As Tony flies by in his car he passes a billboard with the artwork of Fin Fang Foom. Foom is a popular Iron man villain who assisted the Mandarin in the comics with the Mandarin eventually appeared in Iron Man 3.

#3 Wakanda

As a huge fan of Black Panther this has to be one of my favourite easter eggs. Towards the end of the film, Tony Stark gets a debriefing from Nick Fury, a world map is visible in the background. The continent that is most in focus is Africa, and one of the red ‘incident’ icons on that map is pointing at the country of Wakanda. In the Marvel universe, Wakanda is a fictional African nation that is run by a king named T’Challa. When T’Challa comes to the US and wears a costume he’s better known as The Black Panther. Wakanda’s an important place because it has a large deposit of Vibranium, the fictional metal that is used to create Captain America’s indestructible shield.This Easter Egg was confirmed by director Jon Favreau and you can see the country of Wakanda in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War.

#4 The Incredible Hulk

In this same scene you can see a brief shot of a TV screen showing a news report. The reporter is at Culver University, which is where the Hulk has his battle with General Ross' troops. This is the same report that you can see in The Incredible Hulk where some college kids had filmed parts of the battle. So right after Iron Man 2 ends is when Stark goes and meets up with General Ross in the Bar as a S.H.I.E.L.D. consultant. As mentioned in the previous blog post for The Incredible Hulk this is one of the few connections the Hulk movie has to the MCU.