6 months after revealing to the world he is the superhero dubbed by the public as "Iron Man", Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) embraces the fame and attention the role has brought him as he opens the Stark Expo showcasing technological advancements from across the globe. Handing off most of the business affairs of Stark Industries to his assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) whom he names CEO, Tony finds himself under intense pressure from a senate subcommittee chaired by Senator Stern (Garry Shandling) to turn over the Iron Man armor with rival weapons manufacture and government contractor Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) all too eager to get his hands on the armor to reverse engineer it. Additionally, Tony is also facing possible death as the arc reactor keeping his heart alive is slowly poisoning him leading to brash and impulsive decisions. The new attention on Tony soon brings Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) after Tony who carries a grudge against Tony's family.

After the success of Iron Man, Marvel Studios announced their intent to produce a sequel. Despite the success of Iron Man the movie went through length rounds of negotiations including the return of director Jon Favreau and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury who despite appearing in the post-credit of Iron Man had a contractual dispute with Marvel that almost lead to him abandoning the role only to be brought back with a nine film contract. The film was the first MCU property to be released following Marvel's acquisition by Disney and with the confirmation from 2008's The Incredible Hulk Tony Stark cameo establishing the shared universe intent there was naturally considerable hype built around this follow-up. Made for $200 million, Iron Man 2 only grossed slightly more than its predecessor at $620 million, and while the movie received some praise from critics and audiences it was seen as a weaker installment in comparison to the first one with many feeling the film felt overly busy and cluttered with too many pieces. Iron Man 2 is a fun movie in bursts, but it's undeniably an overstuffed movie that isn't as well balanced as it should be.

As you've probably gathered from my plot synopsis in the first paragraph, there is a lot that goes on in this movie even when we don't account for the Avengers initiative setup that takes up a considerable amount more screentime than the teaser at the end of the first movie. With Tony facing multiple crises both personal and professional, having not one but two antagonists out for him, and introducing or expanding on several other characters, Iron Man 2 gave me a similar feeling to Spider-Man 3 where there's good elements at play but they're not given room to breath and often feel like they're crowding each other out. Don Cheadle in particular is really good stepping in for Terrence Howard in the role of Rhody, but it's only really in the third act he gets to make an impression with most of the prior scenes not really allowing him to do all that much. We also have elements that are seemingly brought out of nowhere with a plot point about Tony Stark's animosity towards his father given barely any development that makes the payoff feel inconsequential as a result.

I will say that Robert Downey Jr. Is still good playing Tony Stark, but it does feel like he is going through a similar arc to what he went through in the first movie. The fact that Tony is facing his own mortality is supposed to be a driving factor behind why Tony is engaging in selfish self-destructive behavior, but for much of the running time Iron Man 2 feels very uncritical about Tony's behavior despite the intention being to paint it as a bad thing, but the fact you often seen many emulating Tony's behavior and often celebrating it as something to aspire to makes it feel massively misjudged in its handling on that point. The movie also has even less interesting villains this time around with both Justin Hammer and Ivan Vanko not particularly interesting or memorable as antagonists.

Iron Man 2 isn't an MCU movie I revisit very often. While there are things that do genuinely work, they often feel suffocated by how much bloat is in the movie with not enough time dedicated to any particular thread to make you care to the point you did in the first one. Iron Man 2 feels like a "Bridge episode" from a serial TV series in that it just exists to setup obligatory plot points for things the writers want to do rather than anything in it being a motivating factor in itself.