Iron Man 2 “Electric Boogaloo”

Usually the second superhero film is where the people involved, stretch their creative muscles. The general attitude is that given that anyone who sees the second movie, likely saw the first one, chances are pretty good that they know the hero’s general shtick and can cut to the action. Most trilogies seem to be like the three-act structure stretched out on a wider scale. Don’t get me wrong; usually each individual film is still able to stand on its own, with its own arcs, but overall, a trilogy is an expanded three-act structure.

A good example of this phenomenon can be seen with the original films that made up the Star Wars trilogy. Each individual film has a complete beginning, middle, and end of its own, and can be watched without having seen the others (though it adds to the show if you’ve seen the others), but overall, each film can represent the beginning, middle, and end structure of a wider story when zoomed out. A New Hope is Act One, introducing our heroes, before sending them off on their adventure. Empire Strikes Back is the middle, where basically, the heroes are put through the wringer, as they are really forced to deal with the complexities that come up as a result of the path they’ve chosen. Under these circumstances, the heroes can rise to the occasion and triumph over their demons, or be trounced by them. Empire breaks with the tradition of most mainstream films by ending on a decidedly melancholy note: most of the heroes escape by the skin of their teeth and for one, the future is even more uncertain. Then we have Return of the Jedi where the heroes overcome their struggles, triumph, and most of the important plot threads are resolved.

After Iron Man introduced us to Tony Stark, Iron Man 2 should have been a real chance for the writers to really put Tony through the psychological wringer and with Tony, there’s a wealth of opportunities when it comes to how you’re going to do that. As established, Tony is filthy stinking rich and hasn’t really ever had to struggle for anything in life; clearly, the thing to do is make the guy struggle. Force him to really have to experience the physical and psychological consequences of what he has to do, put him in a situation that cannot be solved by his usual tactics of “throwing money at it” or “blowing it up.” Tony’s always been something of an arrogant ass, so take the wind out of his sails and force him to have to scramble for a bit.

Instead, what Iron Man 2 gives us, is basically setup for the first Avengers film. It is still a lot of fun, due to Robert Downey Junior being charming as fuck, but there’s a wealth of missed opportunities here. And the sad part is, there are hints of a more promising story.

Iron Man fans could reasonably assume that at some point, the franchise was going to tackle its version of the classic “Demon in a Bottle” arc. The original nine issues, written by David Michelinie and Bob Layton, introduced alcoholism to Tony’s history. And as I’ve said before, despite the dated aspects (it ran from March-November 1979) and the sublime silliness that only comic books can possess, it is a fairly solid depiction of alcoholism. The story works because the alcoholism feels like a natural extension of Tony’s character. He’s not merely acting like a stereotype of an alcoholic; he’s being Tony Stark while being an alcoholic. 

Bob Layton said, regarding the arc, "I'm gonna quote David Michelinie here, that it was never our intention to do anything relevant. We were paid to, basically, do the next episode of Iron Man. [It's] just [that in] that particular issue, alcoholism was the bad guy. Instead of Doctor Doom or somebody like that, it was the bottle. That was our villain of the month. And that's really the way we treated it. We built everything up to that. But the point of it is, it was never... we never attempted to be relevant. It just... in the corporate world, what gets to guys? What causes the downfall? Usually it's greed, or it's sex and drugs, right? Well, we couldn't do the sex part, right? Alcohol wasn't talked about all that much, really, to be honest with you. Especially with kids, you know, in that particular era. But, you know, we treated it as we intended to, as the bad guy."

Comic books often have a very loose continuity. There is a general core continuity that mostly remains true across the various adaptations, but outside the core, much of the character’s history can be considered optional. Working within the confines of the core, the writers can explore various ideas and maybe add onto the character background. If the ideas explored are generally well received, then the arc unfolds as planned. If the fans’ collective response to the new ideas is “That’s a bad idea and you should feel bad!” then chances are, at some point, the story will be retconned out of existence. Maybe it will be a formal retcon or the comic could treat it like a cat turd, where they just try to bury it and move on.  But if a story idea is really good, it can achieve enough status to ascend and become part of the core canon.

That’s what happened with Tony Stark’s alcoholism. Writers mined this trait for future plotlines and in nearly every continuity, his alcoholism comes into play at some point. Tony Stark is a recovering alcoholic. That’s who he is.

We can see vestiges of the “Demon in a Bottle” plotline in this movie. Tony’s tendency towards excess and fondness for alcohol is depicted in both this movie and the prior Iron Man film. This movie also has a character named Justin Hammer, just like in the original arc. Granted, the MCU version of Hammer is a far cry from the version in the original arc, but with some reworking, the arc could still work. And given Robert Downey Jr.’s history, he could really dig deep and add some personal touches to the storyline.

From what little I’ve gathered, the people involved with these movies had planned to implement the Demon in the Bottle arc, but the idea was nixed by Disney. I’m not really sure why. They’re okay with Tony becoming more riddled with PTSD as the franchise unfolds, but having him hit the bottle is apparently a bridge too far.

Anyway, I’ve talked your ear off. I suppose I should talk about the actual movie, which despite the missed opportunities, was still a lot of fun. 

It’s been six months since our boy basically announced to the world that he is Iron Man, thus leading to the trend of the MCU generally discarding secret identities. 

Tony has been keeping busy, running a massive Stark expo, and testifying before congress.

As you can probably guess, the US government is more than just a wee bit interested in Tony’s suit and really, you can’t blame them. You show something like that off and you better believe the US military is going to take notice, especially after that “training exercise” from the previous film. So the US government wants their hands on Tony’s tech.

Tony, naturally, is all, “I’m not going to.” This makes sense, seeing as Tony has long been written as something of a Libertarian “Keep the government out of my business!” kind of conservative, but also because he knows that once he hands this over to the government, he cannot control what happens next with these weapons. They could use them for whatever conflicts they want, sell them to whichever ally is willing to pay, and said ally could sell them off to whoever they want, and so on and so on. Having received a personal crash course in the reality of the weapons trade in his first movie, like hell is Tony going to turn it over. 

Of course, there are obvious rejoinders to this argument, some of which are pointed out. First of all, there’s the most obvious: if Tony can figure this out all by his lonesome, what’s keeping some other citizen from a less human rights-friendly nation from doing so? Of course, in reality, there will be a few super geniuses watching the footage of the fight between Tony and Stane who would manage to piece together how some of the tech works and they’ll get together and manage to completely figure it out. Also, if SHIELD, which is a government organization, did the cleanup for the Stane vs. Stark fight, then they can probably study the wreckage and equipment left behind and work it out from there.

And Hammer is right to point out that Tony Stark is just asking everyone to trust that he will totally use this power for the greater good and will not abuse it in the slightest. It’s worth pointing out that later in this scene Tony says that he has privatized world peace. This needs to be pointed out because privatization is an idea that keeps coming up again and again. 

Under Neoliberalism, privatization is key. Basically their view of government is that they feel the government should provide as few services as possibly, with the bulk of services being carried out by private industries. At least, they believe this until corporations crap the bed spectacularly, because that’s what corporations do every time regulations are relaxed. Then suddenly corporations become unabashed advocates for government intervention. 

But here’s the thing: privatization generally results in shittier, more expensive service for everyone. Because even defenders of corporations will admit that corporations exist to turn a profit. Therefore, they will do whatever they can to maximize their goals by cutting corners or jacking up prices or any number of tactics. And no matter how much the Rich market themselves as purely logical and honest masters of the universe, they can and will do whatever they can to increase profit, no matter how under-handed a tactic may be, regardless of the dangers it may present. All regulations that exist regarding worker and consumer safety, are written in blood. 

The idea is that businesses are more efficient than government, but frequently what happens is incidents like when Verizon throttled the data of firefighters during a major wildfire season, only relenting when the fire department upgraded to a more expensive plan. 

Now this is legitimately anger-inducing, but this sort of thing happens when dealing with organizations that value profit above all else; they're going to do whatever they can to increase profit, acknowledging extenuating circumstances only when they are forced to. 

Government gets a lot of well-deserved bad press, but it has also been so villainized that people forget that it can do a lot of good. 

This can be easily illustrated by the COVID crisis. Vietnam organized almost immediately when the virus came to the fore, mandated masks, completely shut down their economy, save for places like grocery stores or other places associated with providing food, and did everything they could to make necessary testing and medical equipment as widely available as possible to those who need it, while having a strong social safety net support the public during this trying time. As a result, for them, the crisis is mostly over, and they can enjoy holiday get-togethers without the looming threat of a major pandemic. 

Whereas the US...That sound you hear is me crying and laughing bitterly. Basically, we're burying on average some 3000 people every day, because of our dumpster fire-in-chief*. 3000, for those of you wondering, is close to the number of people who died on 9/11, so yeah, we're experiencing 9/11 over and over. 

Also businesses, despite their reputations, tend to be bad at innovation. Because they exist to turn a profit and pretty much immediately have to start doing so, they don't have the resources needed to follow an idea that may take decades to come to fruition. People say, "Capitalism made your iPhone," but as this short video shows, all the tech that makes up the iPhone came about from government-funded research. 

So yeah, I understand all the objections to Tony's "You can't have this!" bit. We fearmonger about some crazed nut stockpiling guns, and question whether there should be restrictions on the ownership of some weapons. So technology like Tony’s armor would probably make some people pause. Granted, we can write pages about how much the US sucks at guns, how it operates under an appalling negligence, but I've typed enough rants for now, so I'll just link to a political cartoon.

Before we move on, let's talk about something you guys have already noticed in the clips. Don Cheadle has replaced Terrance Howard as Rhodey and would continue to play him for the rest of the MCU. There are so many conflicting stories, but my understanding is that it came down to money. Like I said, Terrance Howard was the highest paid member of the cast in the first movie, making more than even Robert Downey Jr., the star of the film. 

Downey had pretty much burned all his bridges in Hollywood, and Favreau had to fight to get him to play the part, so he wasn't really in a position to negotiate and demand to much while making the first one. Of course, the first one succeeded beyond even the most optimistic predictions in large part due to Downey's performance and ad libs, putting him in a much more favorable place when the sequel rolled around. And Downey, not being a fool, took the opportunity to ask for money, which cut into the money Terrance Howard would receive. 

Howard threw a fit, but Marvel wouldn't back down and neither would he, so Howard was fired from the films and replaced by Don Cheadle. And since in subsequent years have revealed Terrance Howard to be crazy-crazy and not merely Hollywood-crazy, it might have been a smart move. 

Because there's a difference between crazy-crazy and Hollywood-crazy. You really shouldn't romanticize any form of crazy, but Hollywood-crazy can be more easily romanticized: play it off as something akin to method acting, the actor giving his all to give a good performance. Crazy-crazy on the other hand, there's no romanticizing it. 

This can be seen with Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson's anger and intensity had long been a part of his brand as an actor, but when all those tapes circulated showing just how deep and ugly his anger ran, that's when he crossed over and became crazy-crazy and not merely Hollywood-crazy. 

Rhodey's line to Tony where he basically goes, "I'm here. Deal with it," feels like it’s as much for the audience as it is in service to  the story. 

In addition to the expo, Tony has a new assistant. And since the movie barely tries to mask the matter, I'm not going to bother either. Basically, Natasha Romanoff is making her debut in the MCU. Here's a link to Linkara's take on her comic debut. 

It is a fairly solid story. Her first appearance has her trying to murder Tony Stark which is an entirely understandable reaction. Even Pepper and Rhodey probably fight the urge to choke him. But while there are some hints otherwise, Natasha is mostly the standard Russian femme fatale in her first story. The stuff about her redemption and becoming one of the good guys comes later, and I have to wonder what motivated the writers to invest such time and weight into her character. 

Something about the character must have pulled at someone to convince Marvel to go through with this idea. Maybe someone realized what a sausagefest The Avengers were and decided to add a lady to the team. Or the character could have just tugged at someone for some different reason. As a writer, I've had moments like that where someone meant to be basically a spear-carrier or someone to move the plot along, wound up demanding more of my time and attention. And experience has taught me that a lot of the time, if your intuition is pinging on something, you should really pay attention to it. Maybe it won't lead anywhere, but often it does. 

Hell, that's similar to what happened with Agent Coulson. As said in the review of the first movie, he was created to be a bit character, introduce SHIELD, try to do cleanup on Tony's hijinks, then exit, but he touched a nerve with the audience, which forced those involved with the franchise to bring him back into the story again and again. 

But all isn't well. Basically his arc reactor is slowly killing him.  

And as if it isn't one damn thing after another, he tries to do something incredibly dangerous, only to wind up in actual danger, as our boy, Whiplash aka Ivan Vanko decides to make his move. 

His shtick is well, Howard Stark, Tony's dad, screwed over his dad, so naturally, the key thing to do is unravel the secret to some insane tech and go kill Howard's son. Makes perfect sense. 

A few things, Ivan Vanko, before we go on: one, what was your initial plan? As we saw in previous scenes, Tony decided at the last minute to drive the race car, so you couldn't have just assumed he would be literally on the track when you made your movie? And two, the whole shirtless thing, really?! When it comes to costumes for superheroes or supervillains, I have a general rule: if you wouldn't fry bacon in that outfit, you shouldn't have a character go into battle in said outfit.  

Tony deals with him. Whiplash is hauled off to the pokey, only to be busted out later by Justin Hammer. 

And from what I heard, Vanko's look with the Russian prison tattoos and gold teeth, was Mickey Rourke's idea, as is the bit with the cockatiel. It does give him something of an interesting aesthetic, but it's not that interesting, and Rourke can only add so much. It doesn't help that in the big climatic fight, his idea is much the same as Obadiah Stane's: do a slightly upgraded version of the hero's bit. He does change things up a little with all the drones, but that doesn't add much. 

Really the biggest problem with Ivan Vanko is that he disappears for a good chunk of the movie. There's no sense of building tension as he's just kind of off-screen working on building robots. 

Instead, the bulk of the movie is dedicated to two things: Tony being a jackass and Tony's Daddy Issues

Yeah, the party scene alone is reason why everybody would freak out about Tony's whole "No one else can have this!" bit. Because what's keeping Tony from abusing the heck out of all this, from doing something incredibly stupid with it. Heck, that's what winds up happening. 

After Tony refuses to listen to Rhodey and Pepper trying to talk him down, Rhodey puts on some armor himself. And hijinks ensue. Once again, Tony winds up trashing his own house. This will be a reoccurring thing with him. 

Afterwards, Nick Fury is on the scene, ready to provide life advice and setup. 

Given what follows is several scenes related to Tony's daddy issues, it does illustrate some of the missed opportunities with the villain of this movie. After all, Ivan Vanko's was screwed over by Howard Stark, so he shares a certain kinship with Tony, something that could have been played with. But as said before, Vanko all but disappears from a good chunk of the movie, showing up primarily at the eleventh hour, rather than being used to build up the tension.

:sighs: Part of me wonders if I should quote "This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin again, but I think I'll pass. 

But this is going to be a reoccurring theme in the MCU: daddy issues. Between Howard Stark, Brian Banner, Harold Barton, Odin, and Hank Pym, the Avengers can easily be called the "My Dad's a Dick!" club. Yeah, Team Daddy Issues is more concise, but I go with my name 'cause I like calling them dicks. 

And you better believe there'll be a tag related to this, though for the ease of the matter, I'll only use it if dickish behavior is seen or openly discussed. Though regarding Thanos and Ego, mass genocide goes so far beyond the realm of mere dickery, that referring to it as such, feels appalling, so the title won't apply to them. 

As for the father of our boy, Captain America, well, as I said before, outside a character core identity, some details can get fuzzy. In some versions, Joseph Rogers is a drunk who regularly beats his wife, so yeah, that qualifies him as a dick. However, according to the wiki, the MCU opted to go with the version where he died in the trenches months before his kid was even born. So he's off the hook. 

Though the dickish dads and moms on pedestals theme is something that comes up a lot in the MCU, enough that I find myself wondering about Stan Lee or Jack Kirby's childhoods. Then again, this is a fairly old motif; Marvel is hardly the originator of this trope. 

It says something about the sheer ridiculousness of the MCU that everyone's just like, "Oh Tony, get to work inventing perpetual energy and BTW, can you do this in the span of a weekend?" and just continue to talk about this like it makes perfect sense. 

But Tony gets to things, pouring over journals and video left behind by his father, when he stumbles onto this video from his father. 

Because I am scarily obsessive when it comes to my fandoms, the type who will take one brief scene, one throwaway line, and start building elaborate backstories behind it, yeah, I have done some stuff regarding the Stark family. Though really my views can be summed up by a tumblr post that said, "They were a family of geniuses who didn't know how to communicate with each other, but there was a lot of love in that little family." 

I have to say while I am into fanfiction, the Theodore Sturgeon "99% of everything is crap" aphorism really holds true. There are some gems, some stuff that will make you spend the rest of your life going, "The Horror...The Horror..."** but most of it is just mediocre. 

But I can't hate the phenomenon of fanfiction. I cut my storytelling teeth on fanfiction, telling stories to my brother, and when my family got the Internet and I discovered that other people were doing this and there was a name for all this...mindblown. It's why whenever writers say that they don't support fanfiction, while I respect their right to their opinion and understand why they might feel that way, I find myself liking them a little less. 

 I could go for paragraphs talking about the racist and sexist tropes show up, because fanfiction, like all art, for good or bad, reflects something about the society that produced it. but I'll spare you for now. Instead, I'll bring up something that really bugs me where in fanfics, unless a character's parent is depicted in canon as being as a Saintly June or Ward Cleaver-type, the emotionally absent parent gets exaggerated into so monstrous a caricature as to make the mom in a "A Child Called It" seem restrained by comparison. 

The MCU often has weird random little touches to their films, little quirks or moments that aren't really needed (not necessary for the plot or the characters), but they are just amusing. Like this scene, where Tony tries to regain Pepper's trust, is important, but there's that bit with the stick sculpture on the desk and how it drives Tony nuts. We don't get any reason for why he hates it and we don't need one, but like I said, it's a nice touch, adding a little bit of color and humor to the scene. 

And it seems to go in line with this pin, which speculates on Tony possibly having ADHD. Which I have to say, I have no problems with this headcanon. Granted, ADHD is one of my diagnoses, so I am biased.

One of the beauties of the loose/core continuity-style of comics is that you can pick and choose across the various canons and use whatever you want. Of course, I take this approach to most entertainment, holding onto what I like, throwing out what I don't, and mentally rewriting whatever I want. 

From what I can tell, most people, consciously or unconsciously, do the same when enjoying entertainment. Every time someone partakes of an entertainment medium, as the narrative unfolds, the audience takes what is being given to them and starts crafting their own narrative along with the creator's. This "As you enjoy what is being created, you too, create" idea feels similar to Octavia Butler's Earthseed faith which tenets are: 

            1. Everything you touch, you change

            2. Everything you change, changes you. 

            3. God is change.

But I could be reaching a little here. After all, not everyone has my obsessive nature. Maybe there are people who just watch something and don't go "Hmmm..." at a moment or line that interested them, and explore it in their heads a little. Maybe some people just mindlessly consume and don't think, but I do. Even silly, mindless entertainment is the product of authorial intent and sometimes it’s worth speculating why they made the choices they did.

I suppose I’ve strayed a little far from discussing the actual film and I apologize, but there’s not a lot to talk about. It is a shame because there was potential with this movie, a chance to really develop the character, but instead, they whiffed it and what we get is just setup for Avengers. 

As you can imagine, Tony figures out what his Daddy was trying to tell him and synthesizes a new element like it’s nothing. From there, it’s off to go kick some ass.

And I feel there’s another missed worldbuilding opportunity regarding Stark Industries. Okay, so now that Tony’s out of the business of making and selling weapons, what is his company making and selling? Does he create similar arc reactors for wounded soldiers or other people suffering from similar injuries? Though more importantly, Tony has basically discovered a source of perpetual energy, aka something that overturns several laws of physics and has the potential to upend the geo-political scene in who knows in how many ways. Now that we literally have a source of perpetual energy, what’s going to happen with all these saber-rattling wars in the Middle East once we’re no longer hopelessly dependent on oil to power our economy?

I’m not asking for a part by part, detailed schematics sort of thing, but a few throwaway lines or something would work. Alan Moore did something similar in Watchmen where because Doctor Manhattan can basically synthesized lithium out of nothing, electric cars are the standard. It probably wouldn’t completely alleviate the Reed Richards Is Useless trope that shows up often in the MCU and most comic book movies, but it would help a little.

Anyway, with the smackdown over and finished, let’s sum up what we got from this movie. 

First up, the villain review. As said before, for much of the MCU, the villains were its weak spot. It isn’t until Phase 3 that we start getting compelling villains; until then, the only really interesting villain is Loki. This is why my villain scale runs from 1-5, 1 being the least interesting to 5 being the most interesting. Loki is, of course, at 5, but for the most part, Phase 1 and Phase 2 villains fall in the 1-3 range. There is one so uninteresting that they have been ranked as 0 as in there is nothing remotely memorable about them. I’ll let you guys debate which villain qualifies as Zero.

Anyway, Ivan Vanko had the potential to be a much more interesting villain, but he disappears for large sections of the movie. From what I heard, it was Mickey Rourke who came up with the decision to give  his character Russian prison tattoos and gold teeth, which does add a little something to the character but not a lot. I’ll give him a two.

As for Justin Hammer, yeah, he’s a far cry from his chessmaster comic book version. Really, the thing about the character is that he wants badly to be Tony Stark, to be the charming a-hole, but he only manages one part of the equation. No points for guessing which part. Subsequent materials have revealed him to be Gay, but that doesn’t really add a lot. Representation-wise, it’s not Lefou from Beauty and the Beast-level bad, but that’s not really saying much. I give Hammer a one, making the combine total three, and the average 1.5. 

With the villains out of the way, what we got from the movie is setup for The Avengers, the debut of Natasha Romanoff, and the daddy issues that will become a reoccurring theme with Tony. The movie is still enjoyable due to Robert Downey Junior being charming as fuck, but really it is a heaping helping of missed opportunities. According to the trivia page for this movie, Jon Favreau had to deal with almost constant interference from the higher-ups at Marvel who demanded so many changes that the script was practically being written as the film was being shot. His experience with this movie would lead to Favreau declining to direct any future films with the MCU, though he would still play Happy Hogan, Tony’s chauffeur.

This is similar to what happened with the first movie which like I said, was practically being written and rewritten as it was being shot, with large portions of the film being ad libs from Robert Downey Junior, but while this worked with the first movie, it didn’t play out so favorably for the second one.

Stan Lee cameo: “Larry”

And our credit cookie is Setup for the next film on the roster, Thor.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I hope I am getting better at these reviews, but any advice will be appreciated. I’ll try to not make you wait so long for the next one.

*And this is why you don’t elect a guy who has no experience in government whatsoever into the highest office in the land and why the political outsider meme is just really stupid in general. With any other job, having experience in the profession is generally considered a good thing. If your toilet broke down and your choices are to go with a licensed plumber who has been doing this job since the Bush I administration and can take apart toilets in his sleep or this other guy who, well, he hasn’t ever actually worked as a plumber, but he’s used a lot of toilets which is about the same thing, you’d probably go with the actual plumber.

Yet people don’t apply this logic to politics for REASONS! Running a government is a far different creature from running a business, demanding an entirely different skill set AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, HE WASN’T EVEN A GOOD BUSINESSMAN! 

:clears throat:

Only in politics can you get elected with a complete lack of experience and while expressing nothing but contempt for the organization you want to work for. You try that with any other job and they’ll laugh you off the street.

But it must never be forgotten that the people actually wanted Hillary in office, not him. Trump only got in on a technicality. It’s petty of me to mention this, but I feel no real shame in it, seeing as Trump is the pettiest person alive. I’m still not entirely sure he’s an actual person and not just the avatars of the Seven Deadly Sins stacked on top of each other and wrapped in a Cheeto-colored wrapper.

Why the Electoral College Ruins Democracy

**There’s a reason large swaths of people on the Internet cringe at the mention of Elrond’s wife’s name. Because I’m feeling merciful, I’m not going to link to anything. Y’all can track it down yourself. I don’t want to be responsible for any trauma that might ensue.