First, I should admit that I had never heard of Iron Man until the first movie got released. The first movie was certainly entertaining, as is this sequel (the third one was to a lesser extent). My only beef with this one is that Mickey Rourke's portrayal of the villain comes across as awkward; he's played lots of good roles, but he's the wrong person to cast as a Russian. I guess that we can ignore that and luxuriate in the title character's antics. I haven't seen "The Avengers" (or most of the other superhero movies from the past few years; there are so many that I can't tell which is which).

Basically, we can recognize the movie as nice brain candy. I wonder how Stan Lee originally came with the idea for a superhero who wears an exoskeleton.