Iron Man 2

2008’s Iron Man com­plet­ed Robert Downey Jr’s phoenix from the flames jour­ney to super­star­dom. But this sup­pos­ed­ly iron clad sequel is only fit to rust in the super­hero scrap yard. Fast-talk­ing love­able mega­lo­ma­ni­ac Tony Stark was a role Downey Jr was born to play with his super­hero stylings a live­ly anti­dote to more estab­lished com­ic book crossovers like Bat­man and Spidey. So what went wrong?

Sad­ly for direc­tor Jon Favreau rumours that final cut was in the hands of a stu­dio intent on using the sequel as a plat­form to pro­mote future films like The Avengers, Cap­tain Amer­i­ca and Thor appear to be true. With ter­ror­ism van­quished, part two avoids the pit­falls of racist over­tones that tar­nished the orig­i­nal, but what’s left for the canned cru­sad­er to kick against?

An unin­spired open­ing mon­tage intro­duces Stark’s new neme­sis Ivan Vanko (Mick­ey Rourke) – the son of a Russ­ian physi­cist with an axe to grind. In the film’s one stand out action scene (there are only two) Vanko (aka Whiplash)gets busy with his elec­tric whips carv­ing up an F1 race­track. Mum­bling some­thing about ​‘when God bleeds, the chaos begins’, Rourke does his best to be to this Mar­vel Comics behe­moth what Bran­do was to Apoc­a­lypse Now.

And with the gov­ern­ment des­per­ate for Tony’s tech he’s got to deal with Don Chea­dle (replac­ing Ter­rence Howard as Rhodey) under pres­sure from the mil­i­tary to do the dirty on his pal. And then there’s Sam Rock­well as rival weapons man­u­fac­tur­er, Ham­mer. Rock­well is enter­tain­ing as ever and deliv­ers quips about a new super weapon called the ex-wife with rel­ished gusto.

But look close­ly and you can see the fake tan on the actor’s hands… Like the film, scratch the shiny sur­face and the con­ceit is revealed. And meet Black Wid­ow – a high-kick­ing Scar­lett Johans­son doing a Hit Girl – moon­light­ing as Tony’s new PA now Paltrow’s Pep­per Potts is Stark’s CEO. But can she be trust­ed? Who cares?

Book-end­ed by eye-shred­ding high con­cept it may be. But where’s the meat in the action sand­wich? With shades of Superman’s Kryp­tonite, Stark’s Pal­la­di­um pow­er source is keep­ing him alive but slow­ly killing him. The fight and flight bal­ance of the orig­i­nal is lost as Tony retires to the aug­ment­ed real­i­ty of his pad for a spot of super­hero navel gaz­ing to rival Will Smith’s Han­cock while get­ting a shouty Pulp Fic­tion-style lec­ture from Samuel L Jack­son as Nick Fury.

Cue morose intro­spec­tion and a mid­dle third that’s all-talk-no-trousers while heavy on expo­si­tion for the afore­men­tioned films not even made yet! And in an embar­rass­ing scene to rival Peter Parker’s melt­down in Spi­der-Man 3, Stark throws a par­ty, gets drunk, smash­es up his gaff like a petu­lant rock star and takes a leak in his suit. But you won’t be piss­ing yourself.

The fran­tic finale smack­down fea­tur­ing Favreau fisticuffs and the canned cru­sad­er tak­ing on Whiplash and Hammer’s drones is an orgy of FX porn sure to have fan­boys drool­ing. It avoids the per­ils of Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fall­en keep­ing the action over­load the right side of noise.

But with so many plates left spin­ning and SHIELD dude Samuel L Jack­son rock­ing up again in clunky fash­ion with some awk­ward prod­uct place­ment for The Avengers that adds noth­ing to the sto­ry the film cements its posi­tion with the promise of thrills to come and fails to deliv­er the bang for your buck payload.