Iron Man 2 4K Blu-ray Review & Comments

[Casimir Harlow]

Iron Man's follow-up was marred by a director's compromised vision, offering glimpses of excellence in an otherwise bloated, studio-driven sequel, which finally gets a proper 4K release.
Read the review.

Write your own review for Iron Man 2

 

[Evinger]

Thanks for the Review, Cas. I have Iron Man 1 in 4K already, but Iron Man 2 in Blu-Ray, so bouncing on whether to get the Trilogy (Better value for Money) & sell on the 4K I have, or just buy this as a stand-alone. (Iron Man 3 annoyed me with all the Panic Attack / kid saves the Day stuff).
Hmmm.
EDIT - could have sworn we had the 4K version, but we have the German Concorde Blu Ray Iron Man 1 & 2 release. Now it MUST be purchased)

 

[Casimir Harlow]

Thanks for the Review, Cas. I have Iron Man 1 in 4K already, but Iron Man 2 in Blu-Ray, so bouncing on whether to get the Trilogy (Better value for Money) & sell on the 4K I have, or just buy this as a stand-alone. (Iron Man 3 annoyed me with all the Panic Attack / kid saves the Day stuff).
Hmmm.

Ah, you'll miss it if you don't own the set; it's much better value for money anyway. And I feel like, much like Ragnarok, I want to just force people to watch the third film until they like it. Then again, I feel like that about all (but one) of Black's films.

 

[Evinger]

Ah, you'll miss it if you don't own the set; it's much better value for money anyway. And I feel like, much like Ragnarok, I want to just force people to watch the third film until they like it. Then again, I feel like that about all (but one) of Black's films.

We personally love Thor Ragnarok - our kind of humour. But then again we don't consider that the Movies have to stay true to the Comics. With Books, we are slightly more critical (E.g. remake of Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy. Gary Oldman was excellent, but the sets were straight out of Hollywood, not the Books. And, put against the Superb Sir Alec Guinness BBC series, well....)

 

[Casimir Harlow]

We personally love Thor Ragnarok - our kind of humour. But then again we don't consider that the Movies have to stay true to the Comics. With Books, we are slightly more critical (E.g. remake of Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy. Gary Oldman was excellent, but the sets were straight out of Hollywood, not the Books. And, put against the Superb Sir Alec Guinness BBC series, well....)

Ah, I think I gave Ragnarok a pass because of that humour and style, and because I viewed it as a Thor film. If I thought about it too much, and about the fact that studio politics / character rights basically underserved one of my all-time favourite comic characters, and ruined his best ever comic story, I would have never forgiven this for being basically the closest we'll ever get to a live action Planet Hulk (I mean, imagine if they'd made Gladiator a comedy).

Demon in a Bottle was a great IM story too, but the Studio didn't know what to do with that in a 12A IM sequel when what they really needed was a safe 'win'.

 

[Evinger]

(I mean, imagine if they'd made Gladiator a comedy).

Yep, that would have been horrible. However, it does have one of my favourite Comedy Quotes in it:-

• Proximo : Those giraffes you sold me, they won't mate. They just walk around, eating, and not mating. You sold me... queer giraffes. I want my money back.
  

 

[simonblue]

Thanks for the review Cas,about a 7 for the movie here

 

[Deleted member 795353]

I would have never forgiven this for being basically the closest we'll ever get to a live action Planet Hulk (I mean, imagine if they'd made Gladiator a comedy).'.

Agreed. Planet Hulk would have made an excellent film so as much as I like Ragnarok I think that would have been better. It's funny that you bring up Gladiator because the original Planet Hulk story plays out a lot like Gladiator and maybe people would have been concentrating on those similarities rather than the great story.

As for Iron Man 2? I liked it, decent enough action, ok story, If Iron Man 3 hadn't p**sed me off so much this set would have been a day 1(ish) purchase for me.

 

[scrowe]

I think 2 improves slightly each time I watch it, whereas 3 mainly stays at the bottom of my pile of Marvel movies.

 

[Deleted member 795353]

I think 2 improves slightly each time I watch it, whereas 3 mainly stays at the bottom of my pile of Marvel movies.

Iron Man 3 shows another side of Tony Stark, the Mandarin is brilliant and menacing, and I really like the over done climax scene. But I just can't get over one thing.................and his name is....

 

[Casimir Harlow]

Agreed. Planet Hulk would have made an excellent film so as much as I like Ragnarok I think that would have been better. It's funny that you bring up Gladiator because the original Planet Hulk story plays out a lot like Gladiator and maybe people would have been concentrating on those similarities rather than the great story.

Yeah I can see that, but actually I think it would work well even if people did think of it that way, like High Noon / Outland, Fistful of Dollars / Yojimbo etc. "Hulk goes Gladiator." Even if there were loads of Gladiator parallels, the comic series was powerful enough to embrace and enhance them, and deliver what is, to me, the best even Hulk story (and there are some great ones, like the ones used for the Incredible Hulk movie premise - "days without incident"). Ah well, we'll never know either way. Thanks, rights issues, thanks so much for making Hulk a guest star in his greatest ever tale.

 

[popelife]

Glad to see it gets a solid 8. For me, Iron Man 2 is far from the weakest of the MCU films, and doesn't entirely deserve the criticism it typically gets. Yes, it was compromised by having too many story elements, but there's a lot of stuff to commend it too. I think the showdown with the HammerDroids in the garden at the World Fair ties with Avengers 1 as the best action sequence in the entire MCU (set up by some great dialog between Rhodey and Tony immediately beforehand). Plus Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer, the whole War Machine thing, Mickey Rourke. A hungover Tony going for a burger in the suit. The movie really does improve with repeated viewings.

With hindsight, I feel better about IM2 than I do Iron Man 3. IM2 remained connected to the military hardware theme that the character was born from. IM3 strayed into cheese territory too frequently for me. eg cutesy science kid relationship, one-dimensional evil (English?) henchman, the convenient but implausible suit-swapping finale - which just felt like a lazy "if one Iron Man is good, thirty of them must be better" device.

Weirdly I have no problem with the Mandarin rug-pull.

Of all three movies, it's actually IM2 that I'm most looking forward to re-watching in 4K.

 

[Casimir Harlow]

Glad to see it gets a solid 8. For me, Iron Man 2 is far from the weakest of the MCU films, and doesn't entirely deserve the criticism it typically gets. Yes, it was compromised by having too many story elements, but there's a lot of stuff to commend it too. I think the showdown with the HammerDroids in the garden at the World Fair ties with Avengers 1 as the best action sequence in the entire MCU (set up by some great dialog between Rhodey and Tony immediately beforehand). Plus Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer, the whole War Machine thing, Mickey Rourke. A hungover Tony going for a burger in the suit. The movie really does improve with repeated viewings.

With hindsight, I feel better about IM2 than I do Iron Man 3. IM2 remained connected to the military hardware theme that the character was born from. IM3 strayed into cheese territory too frequently for me. eg cutesy science kid relationship, one-dimensional evil (English?) henchman, the convenient but implausible suit-swapping finale - which just felt like a lazy "if one Iron Man is good, thirty of them must be better" device.

Weirdly I have no problem with the Mandarin rug-pull.

Of all three movies, it's actually IM2 that I'm most looking forward to re-watching in 4K.

Sorry to disappoint mate, but I actually gave the film a 6, and the disc an 8. I'm in the 'one of the weaker MCU films' camp when it comes to IM2 as, whilst it's got some great ideas (as you say, War Machine, Rourke, the military hardware them), it wastes the alcoholic themes from the comic (Disney / PG-13 limitations I guess), and undermines the whole idea that he is literally killing himself with tech, with scenes of cringeworthy childish silliness. The burger in the suit was great, but the night before was abysmal.

Comparatively, I much preferred IM3's front-and-centre PTSD fallout from Avengers to IM2's undermined "this tech is poisoning me/underplayed demon in a bottle" arc. You can see the through-line from IM to Avengers to IM3 to Ultron to Civil War to Infinity War/Endgame, in terms of selfishness/survival/suits, sacrifice and near-death, PTSD and living without the crutch, shielding the world and retiring, and ultimately more sacrifice. And IM2 isn't really needed in there (the ending of IM3 is actually what they should have used for IM2 in terms of poisonous tech, and the drones aren't really a part of the story until post-IM3 Ultron).

Agree about the IM2 garden scene though, it was a few minutes of awesomeness (although Rourke is, again, ultimately utterly wasted here, in comparison to the Monaco scene and face-off in the aftermath) which was pretty strong in terms of Phase 1 (although personally I think Winter Soldier had franchise-defining action sequences in it) and agree that the IM3 finale was way OTT in terms of suit 'plosions. Could have done without all that but I guess the obligatory Marvel big budget blow everything up finale Rule (TM) took over.

 

[popelife]

Thanks for the review (all your reviews in fact) and the comments Cas.

Ah yes, I only just realised you gave the movie a 6, but the disc an 8 - my mistake. I wouldn't particularly disagree with those ratings.

I'm certainly not saying that IM2 couldn't have been better...

And I do see all the thematic links from Avengers to IM3 to Age Of Ultron and beyond.

So I'm mostly agreeing with you.

But somehow, I think I prefer the script / dialog, and the various "beats" of IM2, even if it doesn't fit together quite as succinctly as some other MCU episodes.

I'll admit I probably ought to watch both IM2 and 3 again to crystallise my feelings about them.

But for me, IM3 is where Iron Man's storyline started to jump the shark in terms of plausibility. Yes, I know nothing in the MCU can really be considered plausible, but there's a level of unbelievability where the story becomes less interesting. If the tech can do almost anything, the jeopardy evaporates somewhat, because there's always a stupid-plot-device way out.

There's a lot of IM3 that I didn't quite buy into, from the on-off PTSD symptoms, to exploding soldiers, to bits of suit that fly through the air, to the "ha ha, he was never wearing the suit in the first place!" gag, to detonating multi-billions of dollars of custom armour in the name of a romantic gesture and a spectacular movie ending. I get it, but deep down I don't buy it.

Things were reined in a bit for Age Of Ultron (which like IM2 is flawed overall yet has great stuff all thru it), but eventually it culminates in a nano-suit which springs from nowhere, is presumably atoms thick, but survives all manner of impacts, and which enables the legs to suddenly metamorphose into a rocket engine. Same with the Iron Spider suit. It's ok, but a little part of my brain is going "Oh, pleeassseee...."

Meanwhile, IM2 serves as the origin story for War Machine, establishes Tony's relationship with his father, introduces Black Widow (for better or worse), sketches out what SHIELD are up to far more clearly, even gets into the Tesseract a bit... Who knows, we might even get Justin Hammer and AIM back some time. It sets up a lot of stuff without the viewer necessarily realising. It's not as disposable a story as it may have seemed to reviewers originally. I always enjoy it every time I see it.

I'm slightly splitting hairs though, I've enjoyed both IM2 and IM3 if I'm honest. If I really wanted to rag on an MCU movie, we'd talk Captain Marvel...

 

[moviesengage]

Iron man 2 was my favorite movie and I watched many times. Actually, The secret of the Iron Man film franchise is that Stark is always more compelling outside the suit than he is in it. Cover him up, and all you have is heavy metal.

 

[Evinger]

Actually, The secret of the Iron Man film franchise is that Stark is always more compelling outside the suit than he is in it. Cover him up, and all you have is heavy metal.

I agree with you - the quips and banter are always more effective when he has his "visor down" when suited, or we are "inside" his helmet looking at his face.
And there we have yet another example of a clever trick Hollywood came up with for anyone wearing a Space helmet (or deep-water diving helmet) - the lights in the helmet! There to let us see the face and expressions & so now so embedded that to see an unlit helmet would look odd (I believe even The Expanse, which is quite strong on accurate portrayal, does it ). As I understand it, in real life if they did that, the lights would catch the periphery vision, reflect off the inside of the visor, and generally "blind" the person in the helmet.
Bless Hollywood!