Y’know I, like many an MCU enjoyer, have been told that Tony Stark makes his villains and honestly I don’t completely buy it. 

This one’s mostly Howard’s fault.

The Pitch, if like me 2010 feels like hundreds of years ago instead of fifteen: as if the US government and military would be chill with one guy having an Iron Man suit, thus Tony Stark must navigate his corporate competitors, the army, and the sins of the father all while coping with the potential that he might be dying in the short term.

The thing about phase one is it is the quintessential domino phase. Everything is about both setting something up to be satisfyingly knocked over later and getting to know a wide variety of characters so those falling dominos have consequences we care about. But if an ensemble is going to work, there’s gotta be a one of them that the audience knows just a smidge better. And the man who we met in Iron Man is not yet team material. So it makes sense on a Watsonian level we go on another walk about with our genius/billionaire/playboy (he’s only just now earning his full title but we’ll talk about that in three movies).

If asked what makes Iron Man 2 either stronger or weaker than Iron Man, I suppose the thing I can point to is a sense of refinement. Knowing who Tony Stark is means we can start pushing him around and as a sequel we can start expanding our horizons. We’ve met SHIELD, and now can really start seeing glimpses at what it is they do and what their role is in this universe (not to mention more hints about that Avengers Initiative that we’ve had time to think over). We know Stark’s expanded cast of Happy, Pepper, and Rhodey so we can now trust them to carry scenes and themes on their own. With Pepper managing the company and still a more erratic than usual Stark,  and Rhodey’s torn morality on duty to his job and love and trust of his friend. Toss in two new villains and an actual working script and we have the makings of a more refined Blueprint than the one we started out with.

The bit that most caught me on this rewatch is how much of the story is told by cutting in news reports of the events in question. We’re introduced to the Stark Expo after Stark’s speech by a news anchor explaining what it is. The senate hearing that given the time in which I’m writing this have me potentially the most on Stark’s side I ever will be and that’s hilarious given one of the unfortunate cameos in this movie, cuts in with what would’ve been seen on C-Span for whatever public watches C-Span. The “fight” scene (which is really just an explosion off) is introduced and half relayed to us by the TVs in the bar so that Justin Hammer can potentially meet the newest tool in his tool belt. Even at Stark’s party and his “Gimme a phat beat to beat my buddy’s ass to” (yeah I can’t say it with a straight face either RDJ) there are digital cameras filming from the outside by the scared party goers which as Tik Tok nostalgia creators have told me were a thing you had to do before cell phones supported cameras (weird…).

It all seems to point to how one of the biggest themes of Tony Stark’s stories is how his is a life lived publicly. Every move, every achievement, and far more often every mistake is on full display for the world to pick apart. While Tony makes a good show of moving around this spotlighted existence (or, more accurately, has a damn convincing mask of nonchalance and asshole tendencies that he takes off with three people, tops) his humanity, since we are privy to the mask removal, make it incredibly easy to start yelling at the press to leave him alone. But he’s a child raised in the public eye, he knows no other life, he cannot simply step out of it. And on that, let’s talk about our villains. 

To start, Sam Rockwell is one of the better MCU villain performances, and one of the few Phase One villains we still talk about. While Justin Hammer is Just Some Guy in a Suit, he is the best sort of Just Some Guy in a Suit. He’s smarmy, he thinks he’s charismatic, he’s generally insufferable to be around and dumber than he thinks he is. While he is the face, Ivan Vanko is the genius behind the curtain. He’s got the knowledge but not the face with all of the faux Russian prison tattoos. The true villain with the “sins of the father” thematic resonance driving his motivation, which means it kinda sucks watching him get unceremoniously blown up after getting into a situation he might’ve known better than to put himself in.

While Howard Stark is occasionally neck and neck for the worst fictional  father of the year with John Winchester, he gets one of his few good showings here (the others all mostly involve the Star Spangled Man With a Plan) but by giving Stark one posthumous message from beyond the grave after an exchange that validated Stark’s memory of him was a nice detail even if it was maybe a little bit of  cinematic timing.

So… what’s going on in New Mexico?

Well, other than a stellar little short (seriously check out “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer”) Coulson pulls up to a crater in the desert where a hammer rests upon a rock not dissimilar to Excalibur in its stone. A cut to black with a crack of thunder.

Again, what I wouldn’t give to be in a comic book shop at the time. From two semi-grounded heroes in Banner and Stark with believable enough origins for their abilities, you’re going to Thor!? The thunder GOD!? How the hell is that gonna work? Are we going to have to worry about magic? Who are they gonna cast!? Well, up next we’re gonna check in our local Norse family drama of Shakespearen in Thor.