Rambling About Iron Man 2 With Spoilers

Whiplash is as smart as Tony Stark. If not, a bit smarter in some ways. He managed to make a suit that would severely damage Stark’s Iron Man suit from some sort of basement lab in Russia! Tony Stark did create the original Iron Man suit while in captivity, but he still used his money and tech to create a truly fully functional amazing suit that he uses in later movies. Vanko was able to do this with much less machines and much less money, but a lot of creativity. Not gonna lie, Whiplash was definitely one of the best villain suits I have seen in the movies so far. He even recreated the type of power source that Iron Man used!

As Iron Man’s palladium core was killing him, Vanko was teaming up with Justin Hammer to recreate Iron Man’s suits for private sale. Justin Hammer was probably the stupidest villain I have ever seen in a Marvel film. Even though Vanko had basically the same intelligence of Tony Stark, Hammer treated him as if he was some sort of stupid child. Vanko plays along with this, very well I might add, and acts as if he is just someone who only half knows what he is doing. He isn’t doing what Hammer really wants him to do, but Hammer wouldn’t know because he deosn’t know how to build the machines anyways. Hammer didn’t even pay attention to see what Vanko was doing at all, he just trusted this villain to do exactly what he wanted without any questions asked and without any problems. I hated every time Hammer showed up on screen, the weasly little man he was. I just started rooting for Vanko by the middle, just so Hammer wouldn’t win.

Tony was…..well he was being Tony for most of this movie. Stupid, immature, and 40 years old. He was using the suit as a sort of publicity stunt, and acting as if he was a celebrity. He got drunk, almost hurt people with his stunts, and ruined his relationship with his friend Rhodey in the process. Rhodey took one of his suits to the Army, which was a dumb decision in hindsight, but it got it out of the hands of a clearly unstable Tony. Then, Tony got in contact with Fury, saw that he really needed to change things around in order to defeat a new villain, and got himself together.

I was totally not expecting the battle scene to go as it did. Vanko really thought about every single little possibility, Rhodey and Tony barely made it away! Hammer never even knew what the machines that he paid for were being made to do, and now he’s arrested for putting so many people in danger. Vanko did kill himself trying to kill Tony, but he definitely caused a lot of damage. What he wanted to do was show the public that Iron Man wasn’t invincible, and he definitely did that. If things hadn’t gone the way they had at the end of the fight, Tony would have died. And what wasn’t really explored in the future films was how the public viewed Iron Man after those events.

Sure, he saved a lot of people, but Hammer was one of Stark’s business associates. Now, it is two business associates of Stark that have gone rogue and tried to kill a lot of people. This would have definitely had some sort of impact on Stark’s reputation, but this isn’t even touched upon. The movie also doesn’t discuss how the people really react to Tony after Vanko. The public just treat him like a hero and give him medals, they don’t talk about how so many people, even people in other countries are going after him. It would have been an interesting spin, the public wondering if the superheroes are putting them in more danger than safety, but it isn’t quite discussed until later films.

Oh, and Pepper does get a little better in this movie! Tony wants to dedicate all of his time to making his suits, so he makes Pepper the CEO of Stark Industries. She does have to deal with a lot of the fallout from Tony’s poor decisions, but she does so in a calm and collected manner. There were a few scenes where she had to deliberately be dumb so that Tony would swoop in and save her, but she was definitely better than last film. I’m still mad that she just stood there as the robot’s body was beeping and about to blow up though. Like cmon, she can be a CEO, but she can’t tell when a bomb is literally being a bomb?

Overall, I liked this movie! I liked it a lot. I would deinitely recommend watching this before Endgame, it’s definitely a fun one.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars