Saw IRON MAN 2 over the weekend and thought it was merely okay. Doesn't come close to the original. And I wasn't exactly going crazy about the original one either. The best part was without a doubt the Monaco race track scene where Whiplash makes his entrance. That scene was, in one word, AMAZING!! Probably the greatest entrance of a villain in any superhero movie that I've seen. And the action that follows was equally brilliant! Unfortunately everything else ranged from merely okay to downright baaaad. Tony sitting in a donut was downright cringe-worthy as was Sam Jackson's lame line about exiting the donut. Hardy-harr-harr.. who the heck came up with that one? And the scene where Tony gets drunk and rowdy at the party immediately reminded me of the scene where Peter Parker does the same thing in SPIDER-MAN 3. Yuck!! And I agree with Roger Ebert - the finale was both overwhelming and underwhelming! Overwhelming because of all those hundreds of drones flying around blasting Iron Man with all the firepower they can muster. How the city stayed intact with all those huge fireballs left and right is beyond me. Much less how lucky can one Iron Man get against a slew of such machines. Even by comic-books standards this is really pushing it. But then we get to the showdown we've been waiting for - Iron Man vs. Whiplash! How long does that last? Oh a few measly seconds. Are you kidding me?! How can you create a climax which isn't even 1/4 as great as the racetrack scene. I wish they scrapped all those drones and gave us a proper ending with Iron Man vs. Whiplash. I mean this ending makes the ending in the original one (Iron Man vs. Iron Monger) look like a masterpiece in comparison. And I actually considered THAT one pretty underwhelming - there's just not too much excitement seeing two metal suits clanging against each other.

So yeah I thought this one was a considerable drop-off from the first one. The actors were all good (though I still prefer the acting in the first one) and the racetrack scene was superior to anything in the first film but outside of that the story is really uninteresting and bland. And the ending, as I said, was both overwhelming and underwhelming.