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First, on a side note, if you haven't read and responded to the latest Untold Tales, you really should. Not only is the new line-up story fun and informative, but we're waiting to find out about Hatty being shot in the head. Help the poor guy out by hurrying the next chapter along.
Here's also hoping that things are okay with our missing posters, and they've just found themselves busy as the summer months begin. I know some people were dealing with quite a lot in their private lives... I wish them all my best.
Anyway, "Iron Man 2"... I enjoyed it, although I would agree that it is not as good as the first film. I've heard a variety of theories as to why, but for me it ultimately comes down to the Homer Simpson quote: "It was just a bunch of stuff that happened." It was, for the most part, highly entertaining stuff, but it did lack a strong narrative to tie it all together and give weight to the most important parts.
With the original, it built well to him putting the beat-down on those terrorists in Afghanistan. We knew they were the bad guys, and we had a little extra set-up just before Iron Man arrived to really make us want someone to put a stop to them. The end battle wasn't as satisfying, but logically it made sense as Stane was tied to everything that had gone down before.
With the sequel, I just never felt that investment. There were some great scenes and sequences. The villain never did anything other than try to kill Stark. The personal journey of responsibility that the hero went through in the first movie was a bit more randomly applied in the second, and seemed disconnected from the threat of the villain... as did the quest to heal himself. I think the script could have used one more pass to strengthen up some themes to bring it all together.
That said, the movie is still solidly enjoyable. I liked all of the characters again, some more than I expected to (Fury, I will admit, worked better than I anticipated, although I still don't see him as anything more than Samuel Jackson in an eyepatch.) I'm not sure I ever saw "The Black Widow" in Scarlet Johannson, but I enjoyed her fight scenes.
The movie probably did its job in that I'm more interested in "Thor" after the end credits scene than I am "Iron Man 3"...
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...I admit to and regret being absent, since my blooming career as a freelance writer should give me more time to get caught up on the goings-on of my friends, but these days it's so hard to separate work from fun on my ( not always well ) self-disciplined schedule, that I have a hard time keeping track of everything. I don't know if there are any other freelancers on this board, but I could use some advice on how to manage everything without the nervous breakdown aspect...
Anyway, I liked Iron Man 2 a lot, and I thought there were some utterly brilliant scenes in it. My favorite two being Tony drunk in the armor, for the sheer painfulness his embarrassing actions exude, and the post-humous message from Howard Stark, which actually made me tear up. Scenes like those go a long way towards making up for the shortcomings in other places, like the lack of evidence that Iron Man is actually protecting America ( since the only threats we see-- Vanko and Hammer-- were brought in by going after Stark, and would not have menaced civilians if Tony didn't exist ).
Also, the thing with Tony's heart poisoning him reminded me of a story by Kurt Busiek in Iron Man's third volume, where he finds out that the armor's ambient energy is killing him. In both cases, it sets up a dilemma where Tony's life as Iron Man is destroying him and he needs to make some hard decisions about his identity-- then completely voids the dilemma by having him fix the problem with his inventive genius, and gets to resume his self-destructive lifestyle without learning anything. At least here there was the symbolic aspect of Tony working with SHIELD and finding his father's notes, along with his hook-up with Pepper at the end ( something we never really got to in the comics ), but it's still annoying.
