Iron Man 2 is not a terrible movie but definitely failed at living up to the expectations. It starts off with the most classic revengeful villain, but after a quick first confrontation, you have to go through an endless section that is meant to introduce a bunch of MCU characters and expand on Howard Stark's figure. In the meantime, Ivan prepares for the big fight, which is the only reason you are willing to bear all those minutes of unnecessary drama. Unfortunately, it all builds up into a rushed and lackluster final battle (they fight robots for minutes and then Whiplash dies in like ten seconds. What the?). A totally superfluous movie that could have been only saved by Tony Stark's charisma. Unfortunately, even his character ended up being compromised by the way less inspired writing and sometimes overly cheesy humor à la Batman & Robin.

All the freshness, humor and focus on the character that made the first movie good is not here, I am surprised to see that both movies were directed by the same person.