Where to begin...

Even though all the characters are decent, it just felt like the movie was constantly building up and the payoffs never satisfied relatively.

The final battle just peters out after a pretty explosive opening, which was really disappointing.

Oh, and there are so many moments I rolled my eyes with this one. The first film covered the use of tech really well and made it either outlandishly cartoonish in keeping with the source so it was never a question of the real world breaking immersion or used just enough actual technospeak to satisfy. It did this without ever feeling like it was dumbing anything down, more that it was purposely skirting /just/ enough to avoid it.

In this one we have a dude walking up to a console and breaking through the firewall by tapping on the keys for a few seconds and guessing the password (standard Hollywood "hacker" fare) and the creation of a new element with the kind of deus ex machina that makes you wonder if they even bothered to screen the initial story ideas at all.

Oh, and Don Cheadle's Rohodey doesn't come alive until the last few minutes of the film. Up until that point he's far too serious and there's no chemistry at all between him and Stark. The final battle is really great, they communicate like a couple of kids playing a video game (congratulating each other on well executed kills and such) and they suddenly feel connected. The very final scene between them on the roof sees some excellent banter that was missing from the entirety of the film before it and makes his character seem like a massively missed opportunity.

Overall it suffers in the only way (imo) TDK suffered, that they tried to introduce too much in an effort to up the excitement. The first Iron Man (watched it again last night) is really well balanced in this regard while the new film muddles itself slightly in its efforts.

Overall, it's a fun movie, and I'd definitely recommend it. I just wouldn't expect the same kind of gloss the first film so effortlessly achieved.