After the release of Iron Man, people were ready for another type of superhero genre, not goofy and campy but also not serious and brooding. Iron Man helped this into Hollywood and the world, so Iron Man 2 had to continue the run and prove that it can do the same things but still be a good movie. And boy, did it...not.

It has the good elements of Iron Man: RDJ's performance, humor and entertaining action. However, there are the negatives in this movie too. The villain is not even different from the first Iron Man. Sure, it is technically two people this time with Justin Hammer and Ivan Vanko, but their personalities are the same as Obadiah Stane. Hammer is a billionaire weapons developer who wants Tony's tech and tries to replicate it. Vanko is a vindictive man with ties to Tony's father, Howard, who fights Tony in the end with a much larger suit of armor. So no real difference except that it was split into two people. There is also the fact that it tries so hard to set up so much, such as the Avengers, introducing Shield, War Machine and Black Widow. That is a lot to cover and it doesn't leave time for a good story.

RDJ continues to be great as Tony Stark. I like that they explored his alcohol problem as it just looks further into his insecurities. There was also the scene where Tony watches a prerecorded video by his father, Howard, saying that his son is his greatest creation. To me that was pretty powerful. Kudos to John Slattery for acting like a tool like Tony, but still being able to loving and adoring of his son.

The humor in this movie is also very good, especially for RDJ. The Senate committee hearing is really funny as Tony is just blowing every question off and acting entitled, which isn't unusual for him but RDJ makes it look so easy and it let's us like Stark even more.

The action too is very good, including the fight in Monaco, Rhodey v Stark and the final battle against the Hammer Drones. I will say that the sound effects used for the suits moving was very distracting as it was so clear how much CGI was used. The suits used in this movie were really incredible such as the suitcase suit, War Machine's suit and Tony's final suit.

In this movie, there is so much they have to set up for future movies, mostly the Avengers. It very clearly gets in the way of the story and while it is good to know what could be, it was very time consuming.

I will also say that the product placement in this film was insane such as Oracle, Elon Musk's cameo, and all the other products shown at the Stark Expo.

While it is an entertaining movie, there is so much that gets in the way that really distracts from the movie itself.

+ RDJ + Cool, new suits + Fun action scenes and humor - Rehashed villains - Too much setup for future

Final Score: 7.2/10