Iron Man 2 tops among superhero sequels

He’s suave, charismatic, playful, athletic and has deep pockets — how can you not like this guy? Of course I’m talking about Robert Downey Jr., the actor behind the red and gold metal body suit.

He plays Tony Stark, Iron Man, an army of one, and the real man of steel. The playboy billionaire industrialist has nary a care in the world except for the arc reactor, the palladium-based luminescent energy source embedded in his chest that keeps his heart going and also fuels his personal armour and weaponry. He’s like a battery-powered Batman with really only one toy and it’s the one he also wears. The problem is that the palladium is leeching into his blood and poisoning him with ever-increasing levels of toxicity.

At the beginning of this superhero sequel, we find our protagonist in a kind of political confrontation with an American senator appropriately named Stern (Garry Shandling) who wants to get the government’s hands (and scientists) on the suit itself. Stern is really just trying to acquire it so that the American military can reverse engineer it, duplicate it and outfit its soldiers with the lethal wearable weapons.

That’s where Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) comes in. He’s the head of a major military weapons contractor and he has a major inferiority complex, especially when it comes to how successful his company is in comparison to Stark Industries.

When Stark refuses to bow down to the senator, Hammer is left with nothing until a mysterious Russian figure appears with his own thoracic energy source and a pair of laser whips. Apart from having his very own arc reactor on his chest, Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) has a lot of vengeance in his heart and he blames Stark.

Vanko and Hammer are the perfect working team: one has the brains and the other has deep pockets. This means that the rocket man has another big fight coming his way.

This is how a season of summer blockbusters is supposed to start. Iron Man 2 really has it all: the stellar ensemble of actors perfectly cast in their roles, a compelling story, smouldering along like an ember that you have to watch as it inevitably bursts into flame. The action was great and not overcooked as it easily could have been.

I could say that the script was brilliant, too, except much of it was ad-libbed. The special effects fit right into the reality of the movie and didn’t seem fake. There were tie-ins to future sequels and spinoffs including the SHIELD team with Nick Fury (Samuel Jackson) and a few others. There were guns and emotions and existentialist musings, offering something for everybody.

And, Scarlett Johansson wore a skin-tight body suit as she martially fought her way through an armada of lesser beings. There certainly have been a lot of great fight sequences with ladies of all ages lately. ‘ScarJo’ really gives ZoĂ« Saldana (from The Losers) and 13-year-old Chlöe Moretz (from Kick-Ass) a run for their money.