Iron Man 2

The more I think about it, the more I realize how much expectations play into our appreciation for the films we see. Even in the case of a movie we have seen no trailer for, read no review of and heard nothing about, the bulk of our opinion of it is shaped by expectations formed in the first few minutes: have we heard of any of the actors, or the director? Where and when is it set? What's the theme of the opening sequence? But that case is increasingly rare; how often do we now go to movies that we know nothing about?

The original Iron Man benefitted hugely from low expectations. It followed a series of disastrous adaptations of lesser-known comic books (Daredevil, I'm looking at you), was helmed by a little-known director and was headlined by an actor better known for his bingeing than his acting. By all rights, it should have been bad, and yet it wasn't. It struck exactly the right comic book adaptation balance: a dash of pathos, a nod or two in the direction of the real world, and loads of over-the-top action and witty banter, helped enormously by the cast's ability to improvise and the director's willingness to let them. And the fact that it was released two months before the summer's other all-consuming superhero epic (The Dark Knight) meant that it was commercially successful as well.

Unfortunately, that success bequeathed to the inevitable sequel a loftier and more difficult set of expectations. With the origin of the characters established by the first movie, Iron Man 2 has the more difficult task of taking the characters to interesting new places in entertaining new ways while building on the themes introduced by the original. That it narrowly fails to do so is not so much a function of the movie's own flaws as it is a demonstration of the effects of high expectations.

On its own terms, much of what's on display here is as it should for a big, flashy effects-heavy summer blockbuster. A cast of well-cast big-name stars both returning (principally Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow) and new (Don Cheadle, Samuel L. Jackson, Mickey Rourke, Scarlett Johannson and Sam Rockwell) trade rapid-fire, reasonably witty dialogue, punctuated with shiny, crowd-pleasing special effects and large-scale explosions. The plot is rather too convoluted to explain in any detail here, but the basic outline is worth laying out: after announcing to the world at the end of the first film that he is the eponymous armored superhero, billionaire former arms manufacturer and playboy Tony Stark (Downey) has used his flying, red-and-gold supersuit to 'privatize world peace.' But all is not well - his company has not made the transition from defense contractor to generalized technology purveyor entirely successfully, while his relationship with his hyper-competent assistant/corporate successor/love interest Pepper Potts (Paltrow) is strained by his refusal to own up to the fact that the continued use of his armored suit is rapidly killing him. Meanwhile, new enemies abound, in the form of a smarmy US Senator (Garry Shandling) who wants to nationalize Iron Man, a competing industrialist who wants the brass ring so badly he can't quite articulate it (Sam Rockwell, perfectly cast) and an insane Russian physicist (Rourke, bearing golden teeth and a homeless/punk hairstyle) whose family has a long-running dispute with Stark and his father. Cue intrigue, and explosions.

The whole endeavor, with six or seven major characters swapping allegiances and agendas, treads dangerously close to incomprehensible but manages to move along with enough vigor that it avoids falling into the trap its own ambition sets for it. The trade-off is that we're not treated to an enormous quantity of character development - although that said, few of the leads seem short-changed, with the exception of Cheadle, who in taking Terrence Howard's role as resident straight man Lt. Col. James Rhodes, is given little of interest to do and does little with it - a rare disappointing performance from the Oscar nominee. There are a couple of particularly well-executed scenes, including the sequence where Rourke's character ambushes Stark in the middle of a Formula One race in Monaco, and a funny bit where Stark gets drunk in his armor at his own birthday party and trashes his mansion. But these scenes don't add up in particularly logical fashion, and there's little here that approaches the sheer joy of the scenes in the first movie where Stark, having escaped captivity and returned with a new outlook on like, exiles himself to his basement and tinkers with his machines until he's created the suit of armor that will allow him to do something meaningful with his life. In those scenes by himself, we saw Downey at his best - brilliant but short-tempered, improvisational but utterly determined - even though he can't quite articulate what he's determined to do, or why.

With its larger cast and larger ambitions, the sequel loses sight of that central truth: that the success or failure of the movie is down to Robert Downey Jr. playing the hell out of a character not too terribly different from himself. Even though there are a lot of other things to like here, the combination of sky-high expectations and fact that there's less of that single critical Downey-based element ultimately relegates the film to expanding the franchise rather than improving it.