Iron Man 2 (2:05, PG-13, Imax) — Fantasy: Comics & Pulps, biggie, sequel

This film suffered from what I'm calling Transformers 2 syndrome: It's bigger, faster, dumber, and way way louder than the original.

I like Marvel's Iron Man. He's one of the few comic-book characters who doesn't fetishize his secret identity. Quite the contrary, in fact. It's billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) who's the larger-than-life personality. He revels in his role as world savior, but he's clear right up front that it's all about him; Iron Man is just a suit of armor he wears when it, um, suits him.

Like DC's Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman, Stark doesn't have any innate superpowers. He's just genius-level smart; really good with gadgets; and blessed with scads and scads of money, which gives him free time, independence, access to the world's best technology, and not much need for accountability. But, whereas Wayne is constantly plagued by self-doubt, Stark is supremely self-confident. Indeed, in this sequel he doesn't even blink when owning up to a psychiatric evaluation of narcissism.

Sigmund Freud would have had a field day with the daddy issues on display between Stark, villain Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), and their respective fathers, Howard and Anton. The dads were both genius inventors themselves, but Howard went on to fame, glory, and wealth, while native Russian Anton was driven from the country in disgrace during the McCarthy era. Howard is long dead, and Tony remembers him as aloof and distant, but early in the movie Anton is shown dying in penury and misery in Siberia as Ivan looks on. With his dying breath, Anton blames the entire Stark family for his misfortune, and Ivan sets out to settle old family scores.

Here's where things start to get ... well, unbelievable is too strong a word for a premise that has already stretched believability to a fine sheen, but let's say sloppy. We're asked to buy into plot premises that frankly don't bear close examination.

Right off the bat, we're supposed to believe that the 2 dads, back in the Cold War era, came up with brilliant weapon designs that nobody in the intervening half-century has even thot of, let alone tried to build. Anton's take the form of weathered blueprints, while Howard's were disguised as the landscape architecture for the Stark Expo Plaza (a roman a clef version of the 1965 New York World's Fair grounds).

Then we're supposed to accept that Ivan knows exactly where to find Tony: driving a Formula 1 car at the Monaco Grand Prix. Ivan makes his 1st public appearance as Whiplash, wielding 2 powerful sparky electronic whips that can shear an engine block in half. Except that we just saw Tony take the driver's seat at the last possible minute, claiming that it wasn't any fun owning a race car unless he could drive it himself. His hypercompetent, loyal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) looks on aghast as this scene plays out on live TV. We see the regular driver throwing down his helmet in disgust and stalking off. So how did Ivan know this was going to happen? As I said, sloppy.

Similarly, screenwriter Justin Theroux makes a big deal about Ivan's love of birds. Rival military industrialist Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) tries to ingratiate himself with Ivan by promising to fetch his birds from the old country, but then tries to pass off a replacement cockatoo as the original. Ivan makes a huge fuss over this. We're convinced that this bird will eventually play some kind of significant role in the film's resolution, but no. So why spend all the screen time setting it up?

Conversely, we get almost no screen time explaining the relationship between Lt. Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes and Tony. Indeed, on the 1st 3 occasions where we encounter them together, they seem to be working at cross purposes, and Rhodey's primary allegiance is clearly to his employers at the Pentagon, as he absconds with one of Tony's spare suits of armor to turn over to Hammer. Rhodey didn't get much play in the 1st movie, where he was portrayed by Terrence Howard, and so people who attended the sequel needed more of a clue that he was supposed to be Tony's boon companion and trusted confidant, especially since switching actors to Don Cheadle further undermined the continuity.

And there are 3 characters — Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johannsson), and Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) — who are agents of SHIELD, but absolutely no effort whatsoever is expended explaining what SHIELD is, what it's relationship is to the Pentagon, or why Tony Stark is giving them the time of day.

In short, while director Jon Favreau does a fine job with all the slam-bang action/adventure stuff that most viewers probably signed up for, we were evidently expected to check our brains at the door. And it's not as if they couldn't have made this stuff more believable; they just didn't try!

The "surprise" at the end consisted of a car driving aaaaccccrrrroosssss ttthhheee dddeesssseerrrt, finally arriving at a big circular excavation; the viewpoint tilts down, and we get a brief glimpse of Mjolnir. Now, if you're wondering "What the heck is Mjolnir?", it's the magical war hammer of the mighty Thor, Norse god of thunder, who will be featured in an upcoming film also from Marvel Studios. In other words, you just stuck around for a particularly boring trailer for a movie that hasn't even been made yet. Y'know, Paramount, you just ruin the Easter-egg hunt if you hand out maps.