The beauty of the original film was that at focused on the origins of the character, a side-benefit of that was the fact that it had Robert Downey Jr in the lead as the charismatic billionaire playboy Tony Stark. Let's face it, following Stark around for the first 40 odd minutes was as much fun as the bits where he put the claustrophobic's nightmare suit on and fanged around with rock music playing in the background.

Now for #2, we've been there and done that.

Perhaps that's why they chose to focus the first 10 minutes on establishing the new playa in town Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) who it must be said looks like he is carved out of wax in this film? Perhaps the lethal cocktails of drugs, alcohol and steroids that he has ingested over the years has pre-embalmed him from the inside out? In any case he looks creepy, which is a good thing I guess as a villain.

Vanko is the son of an ex-colleague of Tony Stark's Dad, who was the original brilliant scientist and inventor who set up Stark Industries in the first place.

Vanko's Dad has just died, and he has decided he does not like Tony Stark one bit.

I think I'll take a breath to point out that Iron Man 2 is a good film, but not the great one as some have suggested, and like Spiderman 2 it is nowhere near as good as the original, (why does everyone talk Spidey 2 up? It was mediocre at best.) The problem is that they tried to force too many new bad guys in, and tried to bring in subplots for Pepper Potts of all people, even Stark's bodyguard gets his own couple scenes, I know he is the director but give me a break! What I am trying to say is that they took too long to get Scarlett Johansson in the catsuit, and once they did she only got a few minutes to strut her latex clad stuff. (For all the reports about her frontal assets I need to say that there is strong competition from behind... so to speak.) Everyone now knows that Stark is also Iron Man, and the government wants him to hand over the suit so that they can do... whatever with it. What everyone doesn't know is that the very thing keeping Stark ticking is also slowly killing him, and he desperately researches every possibility that might prolong his life and save him.

Along the way a nifty young lawyer named Natalie (Johansson) moves into Tony Stark's radar screen, he is entranced by her various skills and capabilities - and no doubt by her amazing rack and smokin' body - and appoints her his personal assistant. This is handy for the latter part of the story, (and hopefully a sequel that will ideally take place in either a sauna or nudist colony. I will be happy in either case.) Pepper seems a little perturbed (jealous) by her presence... but who the hell cares? Once Vanko and Stark finally are introduced all logic and plausibility flies out the window. This is OK in small doses as leaps of logic are required in any superhero film, but the first film took such pains to show just how all these crazy events could almost be believed in so-called real life that changing tack and throwing logic out the window is annoying. So many leaps were required that I was puffing and my knees were sore by the end of the first Iron Man / Ivan Vanko battle.

Vanko and Hammer ultimately team up to move towards their dual goals, for Vanko revenge for Hammer the #1 spot.

Nick Fury (Sam L Jackson) pops in (contractually obliged to be in almost every Marvel superhero film for eternity) and informs Stark that he knew his Dad, and that he might revisit some old home movies for advice and perhaps assistance.

(I soooo wanted to bag Mickey Rourke as the bad guy, especially when I knew he was to be a Russian. I thought his accent would be tortuous but it actually wasn't, at least right until the very end. I think he did OK in a mostly non-speaking role but didn't add much to the film bar his saggy cheating death appearance.) When watched in isolation Iron Man 2 is a bit of a muddy mess at times that survives largely on the goodwill and credibility forged by the far superior original. I liked bits of it and think the franchise definitely has more in it to come, but feel a little let down by this one. Perhaps that's why I waited almost 2 months to watch the damn thing after it came out.

Final Rating - 7 / 10. Worth a look, but the original was far superior. Less Potts, less Roads, fewer bad guys, more Scarlett in the suit and a return of the more palatable Tony Stark for 3 please Mr Favreau. I'll even let you have your own pointless sub-plot if you do that for me.