Review: Iron Man 2

IRON MAN 2
dir. Jon Favreau
Paramount Pictures
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

     Marvel Comics is making its way through the collection of Stan Lee's most famous comics and turning them into some of the best action movies around. With the success of X-Men (Bryan Singer, 2000) the company has teamed up with Paramount, Columbia, Universal and 20th Century Fox distribution companies to bring us some of the biggest names in movies all decade: Spider-Man, Hulk, and Iron Man. Other companies followed suit in a frenzied attempt to bring their comics, cartoons, and video games to the big screen in hopes of winning big. But with such a limited variety of superheroes, and Marvel Comic's ever growing greed for money combined with the audiences thirst for more superheroes, it becomes inevitable that every superhero has his sequel (and often third installment) and Iron Man is no exception.
     As Tony Stark declares "I am Iron Man," the crowd cheers and the curtains fall, end of Act I. Two years later, the audience is hurtled back into the world of Mr. Stark and his iron suit for Act II, where they find that not all is well for someone who calls himself a superhero. The government wants the "Iron Man weapon" turned over to the military so that an ordinary civilian isn't the one keeping the world in peace (which has apparently happened in the past couple years). Also in the past couple years, Stark Industries has built a city of peace, technologically advanced, and the site of the Stark Expo, where all of the greatest inventions are displayed before hundreds of people. Of course not only heroes want to show off their goodies at the show.
     Like all great superhero sequels, the film must show a darker side of what it means to have to save everyone's lives. In Spider-Man, Peter Parker began to lose his power and decided to give up the suit for a while. In The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne learns that being the Batman isn't always a reward. But many of these tales are very dark, and bring an eerie side to the joviality of superhero-hood. Iron Man attempts to step just to the right of being that dark sequel and shows the audience a mixture of generic superhero sequels and something a little less gloomy. Favreau himself said in an interview through SuperheroHype.com that they were going for something a little less dark this time around, "We didn't want to make it an exploration of the darkness of the human soul, but we definitely showed Tony's dark side a bit in our words."

     The dark side tends to be childish: Tony Stark's enemy is his competitor Justin Hammer, played by Sam Rockwell, who attempts to outdo the Iron Man by simply mimicking it, a failure waiting to happen. The childish anger that comes with the competition, however, is rather uninteresting. It's a cliche that many low budget action movies seem to suffer from. Instead of a competent and truly sinister opponent, characters in these less than intriguing films are blubbering idiots who mimic what the good guy does and just happens to succeed (but at the cost of himself more than the protagonist). The other villain, Whiplash played by Mickey Rourke, is much more competent, but seems held back. With a limited English vocabulary (his mother tongue is Russian), and "limited resources" he is unable to defeat the Iron Man by himself and requires help from someone with resources. If this character had been further developed, instead of Justin Hammer, the movie might had that "Dark Knight" beauty to it.

     All in all, the movie seemed to be a move away from reality into a more cartoon realm, especially with the inclusion of Samuel L. Jackson's character Nick Fury, the one-eyed man who leads the Avengers in the upcoming film The Avengers in which a group of superheroes from all the superhero movies come together to fight some bad guys. What worked for Spider-Man and Batman Begins more than most other comic-book-made-movies, was the strong foundation the films had in reality, Batman especially. These are everyday people who just happen to be able to help the community with their talents. The villains are also ordinary people who just tend to dislike the current situation they find themselves in and decide to change things by being evil. It is this strong foundation in reality (which I believe The Incredible Hulk (Louis Leterrier, 2008) lacked), that draws the audience to view the sequels. Iron Man 2 loses that tight grip that the first installment had, and lets characters like Nick Fury and Agent Romanoff take larger roles in the story.

     The film does, however, make very good use of its medium. Although rather Hollywood in style, the camera never misses an opportunity to show us what movie magic can do. Favreau frames his characters perfectly in cinescope 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with some of the best CG effects since the first Iron Man. But, was the CG used to enhance the story, or just there to be a spectacle?

Watch the trailer at Apple

Box Office Records

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     Although Gone With The Wind (1939, Victor Flemming) will maintain it's dominating grasp as highest domestically (within the United States) grossing film of all time after adjusting for inflation (With a total of over 1.4 billion dollars Gone With The Wind beat George Lucas' 1977 Star Wars: A New Hope by nearly $180,000,000, according to www.boxofficemojo.com), in recent years we've seen a slew of "Record Breaking" movies hit the box office.

     I first became aware of the power of the box office back in 2005, when Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith threatened to outdo its predecessor A New Hope as highest all-time grossing movie. Seeing it twice on opening day myself (once at the midnight showing, and then again at 9 pm that night) I tried my hardest to contribute to it's record breaking. Of course, the only record it broke was the opening day gross (gaining 50 million in a single day), since people generally realized it wasn't the most amazing spectacle of a movie. But it got me hooked, nonetheless, to following the Box Office, and I became obsessed with knowing more about the history of the Box Office than anyone else I met.

     Since Revenge of the Sith, several more movies have broken that opening day record. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, taking off from it's predecessor The Black Pearl drew enough moviegoers to gain just a bit more than Star Wars with a $55 million opening day record. I was sorely disappointed, seeing as how I was more into Star Wars than I was Pirates, but I quickly learned to love Pirates and was the in line for the 12 am showing of At Worlds End (even though it had come out five hours earlier...) hoping it would break it's predecessor's record, with no such luck.
     Spider-man 3 quickly beat that record, earning $59 million opening day, but the movie itself turned out to be another flop, not in the Box office (since it made $890 million worldwide), but the movie itself was despised by most Spider-man lovers, including myself. Spider-man 3 did, however, gross an impressive 151 million dollars over the course of the weekend, earning it the highest grossing opening weekend of all time, beat only by The Dark Knight.
   Here was an impressive feat: The Dark Knight, due partially to it's popularity brought on by the death of its supporting actor Heath Ledger, beat several box-office records and came very close to breaking the one that really counts. Since I was already an avid box-office watcher, I knew The Dark Knight could break the record when the ticket I bought the day before was one of the last of the 12:30 Showings. All the showings for 12:01 were sold out, and most of the 12:30 showings were gone. I knew that this was going to break records.
   In a craze, I watched boxofficemojo.com, waiting for the movie info to be released. Immediately the news was good: at $67 million, $18 million at midnight showings alone, it was the new highest opening day grosser of all time. Then, it was the highest opening weekend grosser of all time at $158 million. It was the fastest movie of all time to make it to $100 million (beat in 2009), and still is the fastest to 200, 300, and 400 million. It currently still holds the record for the top 3 day gross as well as the top 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 day grosses. By the second week, it was a record breaking movie on several accounts. And the second weekend proved it still had it, earning the highest second weekend gross of all time with $75,166,466!
   I watched closely as the movie made it's way to the second highest domestic grossing movie of all time, rapidly approaching Titanic. Oh how I hated Titanic. With a terrible opening weekend of only $28 million, nobody would have believed that it would continue to gain more than 20 million dollars a weekend for ten straight weekends. But it did, and it that earned it the record of highest all time grossing movie both domestically and worldwide. At 600 million dollars domestic gross, the movie seemed untouchable. And, with an impressive $1.84 billion worldwide gross, I had few hopes that The Dark Knight would smash those records. Unfortunately, The Dark Knight couldn't do it. Just reaching $533 million by the end of its run in America, and cresting $1 billion worldwide before it left theaters for good, The Dark Knight only made it to second place.
     More disappointment was to come when every teenage girl and her mother went to see Twilight: New Moon, giving it a 5 million dollar lead over The Dark Knight at $72 million opening day. This allowed it to become the fastest to $100 million, beating the beautiful Dark Knight. Thankfully, that was as far as it made it. The rest of the weekend proved not so fruitful, and New Moon only made it to 142 million dollars opening weekend, and beat no other records.
     And then came Avatar. People were wary of it. Would a man who hasn't directed a film in over ten years be able to create something as lovable as his previous record-breaker Titanic? Enough people believed in it to push it to 28th on the all-time opening weekends list at $77 million. And then came the rush. Word spread. People flocked. With an astounding turn of events, Avatar completely turned around, earning almost as much its second weekend at $75,617,183, beating The Dark Knight by a mere 450,717 dollars, the new highest second weekend of all time. And it didn't stop there. Avatar continued its winning streak, breaking the third highest weekend of all time, and then the fourth highest weekend of all time, and now the fifth highest weekend of all time, becoming one of only three movies to cross the 500 million dollar mark on MLK day, the 4th day in the 4-day weekend and only 32 days after its release.

     The problem is, Avatar is cheating. Because of the higher cost of 3D, (the need for glasses and the sort) each ticket is costing audiences several dollars more. This cost is setting the movie higher on the charts than most other, non-3D movies would make it. "In 38 days, Avatar's tally stands at $551.7 million, 80 percent of which from 3D presentations (including 16 percent from IMAX venues alone). " states Brandon Gray in Box Office Mojo's weekend report. Everyone expects Avatar to do what Dark Knight couldn't: beat Titanic. Already at $516 million, my prediction is that three, maybe four weeks ahead, the $600 million mark will be crossed, and Titanic will, once and for all, be put to rest after holding the record for twelve years. And, having already surpassed all the films that previously came close to beating Titanic's world-wide record, Avatar will undoubtedly surpass Titanic in no time. It already has an impressive 1.6 billion, only 200 million away from beating James Cameron's predecessor Titanic. Is it really worth it to beat Titanic with a film whose contents are so non-unique? 

UPDATE:

    As of this weekend, Avatar has beat Dark Knight's second place record of $533 million. Earning $34.9 million this weekend, Avatars domestic gross is now $551.7 million, well on its way to beating Titanic's $600.8 million all-time record.
     Another impressive feat on Avatars behalf is its $200 million gain worldwide. The gain wasn't quite enough to push the film above Titanic's $1,842,879,955 worldwide gross, but at $1,838,802,321, my prediction seems to be holding true, Avatar will beat Titanic in a matter of days.