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Spoiler-Free Iron Man 2 Review 118

Posted by CmdrTaco from the where's-my-arc-reactor dept.
Although it's not out until May 7, brumgrunt sent us a spoiler-free review of Iron Man 2. The short verdict is that it's not as good as the last one, but considering how much acclaim was piled on that, I don't really think anyone was expecting that.
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Spoiler-Free Iron Man 2 Review More

Spoiler-Free Iron Man 2 Review

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  • Iron Man Vs. Justin Hammer. Sounds like a.... Oh well, at least Schumacher isn't there to put nipples on the suit.

    • Iron Man Vs. Justin Hammer. Sounds like a.... Oh well, at least Schumacher isn't there to put nipples on the suit.

      You know, the interesting thing about the nipples on the Batman suit is that initially they weren't part of the design. When Joel Schumacher first had Val Kilmer wear the suit, he realized something was missing - and so he suckled Kilmer's chest until the now-well-known nipple features of the Batman suit emerged.

  • The Real Iron Man!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by oztiks ( 921504 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @10:49AM (#31999536)

    The Real Iron Man [openjokes.com]

  • ...does it blend ?

  • Okay, submitter and editors need a brain check. (Score:5, Informative)

    by drgruney ( 1077007 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @10:59AM (#31999668)
    /. says "Spoiler-free" First line of article says "spoiler-light." I'm glad they said that so I could stop reading and save myself the blind rage I would have been in.

    • Re:Okay, submitter and editors need a brain check. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ShadowRangerRIT ( 1301549 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @11:03AM (#31999726)
      I'm tagging as !spoilerfree and spoilerlight. Might help others avoid making a mistake.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by nangus ( 1026732 )

      The only things in tfa that could be considered spoilers is the same data that one would get from the trailers.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by drgruney ( 1077007 )
        Some of us avoid trailers.

        • Re:Okay, submitter and editors need a brain check. (Score:4, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @11:12AM (#31999842)

          Some of us avoid trailers.

          Especially now, since it is tornado season.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by nangus ( 1026732 )

          so if you go to see a movie you cover your eyes and go lalala till opening credits roll?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Sancho ( 17056 ) *

            I knew people who did this for the fourth Star Wars movie. They were so excited about it that they didn't want to know anything going in. I imagine it was pretty tough for them.

          • so if you go to see a movie you cover your eyes and go lalala till opening credits roll?

            It's not a bad way to go, really. I mean, it's a drag having to avoid information, but the trailers provide too much information. By the time you actually see the movie, half the scenes wind up being stuff you've already seen, or at least enough of it that there's no potential left to be surprised by what happens.

      • Re:Okay, submitter and editors need a brain check. (Score:4, Funny)

        by Abstrackt ( 609015 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @11:13AM (#31999848)

        The only things in tfa that could be considered spoilers is the same data that one would get from the trailers.

        Trailers aren't very indicative of what kind of movie you're going to get though. Link. [youtube.com]

        • And some movies are nothing more than filler between the parts that were included in the trailer.

        • I know its a joke, but it's true that trailers can mislead people. The TV trailers for KickAss are a very good recent example. No one who saw those, without doing any further research, would suspect the movie to be as brutal and violent as The Watchmen.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jollyreaper ( 513215 )

      /. says "Spoiler-free" First line of article says "spoiler-light." I'm glad they said that so I could stop reading and save myself the blind rage I would have been in.

      That would have been great prep for going to see a Daredevil movie.

    • Re:Okay, submitter and editors need a brain check. (Score:5, Funny)

      by eln ( 21727 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @11:14AM (#31999864)
      It says spoiler free in the title, but then the subtitle says "spoiler light". As we all know, "light" is a word that's not regulated by the FDA, so it's impossible to determine how much spoiler content actually exists in a review using that term, other than that it contains fewer spoiler than one marked "regular" or "full spoiler" or something of that nature.

      • It says spoiler free in the title, but then the subtitle says "spoiler light". As we all know, "light" is a word that's not regulated by the FDA, so it's impossible to determine how much spoiler content actually exists in a review using that term, other than that it contains fewer spoiler than one marked "regular" or "full spoiler" or something of that nature.

        I can only assume that "full-spoiler" would be the entire movie, with director commentary. At least, that seems to be the most completely spoiled version of a movie when you view the DVD.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Fuuuuu. There's a huge spoiler at the end of the 6th paragraph. :-(

      • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Fuuuuu. There's a huge spoiler at the end of the 6th paragraph. :-(

        Hey buddy, ever hear of a SPOILER ALERT? You just ruined the whole review for me.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Abstrackt ( 609015 )

          Fuuuuu. There's a huge spoiler at the end of the 6th paragraph. :-(

          Hey buddy, ever hear of a SPOILER ALERT? You just ruined the whole review for me.

          Thanks a lot... I ended up reading your post before his and you totally ruined it for me.

    • I don't understand your problem. If you don't want to spoil the movie then don't read about it. A review can't be spoiler-free; as long as it gives away *any* information about the movie then it is by definition not spoiler-free. Just say no! And let us little people enjoy the article. (ahem).

    • Here's an actual spoiler-free review: http://blackprint.cc/movie-reviews/iron-man-2-movie-review/ [blackprint.cc]
  • I RTFA'd and that review is not spoiler free. It gives out a good chunk of the plot of the movie as well as several pivotal scenes. So for anyone who hasn't RTFA'd yet, here's your warning. It would be nice if the Slashdot editor's RTFA'd, and while we're at it, I want a pony for my birthday.
  • It's coming out on Thursday on this side of the pond :p

  • i mean, you can't review a movie at all without giving SOMETHING away, but if you want your iron man 2 experience to be spotless, you already know not to read any reviews at all

    me personally, i read lots of reviews and don't mind anything being "spoiled." in fact, many times i purposefully read the wikipedia entry for a movie to get the entire plot in my head before i see the movie. because unless you are talking about "the crying game", plot points aren't really the issue in terms of your experience being ruined. the single biggest destroyer of movie enjoyment is: expectations. movies you expect a lot from disappoint more easily. simple as that

    so here goes:

    !!!!!!!!

    SPOILER WARNING FOR ANY SEQUEL YOU WILL EVER SEE

    !!!!!!!!

    1. you enjoyed the first iron man a lot,
    2. so you look forward to the second iron man a lot,
    3. therefore you will not be as impressed by the second iron man

    with that in mind, try to enjoy iron man 2, realizing that the psychology of pleasure (anticipation more influential than delivery) means you are your own worse enemy in the entirety of your lifetime of moviegoing experiences. this lesson applies to all other experiences in your life you do for pleasure to: from going to a restaurant, to buying a car, food, to sex. there's a good reason why women tease, whether they realize it or not: the buildup of anticipation drives your pleasure more than the actual mechanical act of sex

    understand psychology, master the pleasure you derive from life

  • Spoilers Here (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    1. Stark does what Stark does, flies around promoting Stark Expo. He works to keep Ironman away from the government.
    2. Whiplash attacks Stark. Stark kicks the hell out of Whiplash using the portable in a case Ironman Suit
    3. Natasha begins to work for Stark, and eventually steals a suit
    4. Justin Hammer springs Whiplash from the French jail and gives him a job reverse engineering the stolen suit
    5. The stolen suit becomes War Machine, and is given to Rhodes
    6. Rhodes turns over War Machine to Stark which is giv

    • Wallah.

      What the hell is "wallah"?

      • http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/voil%C3%A0 [wiktionary.org]

        it is supposed to be voila. The AC just doesn't know how to spell it, and I don't know how to make the accent work in slashcode.

      • What the hell is "wallah"?

        Presumably, Iron-wallah would be a steampunk Indian version of Iron Man during the British Raj.

  • First one (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew&gmail,com> on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @11:15AM (#31999892) Homepage Journal

    RDJ is charismatic. The first film was fun. It may be the best looking BluRay I own. But most of us went in with relatively low expectations and were impressed. That doesn't mean the first film deserved all the praise it got. It doesn't hold up really well to repeat viewings. There isn't a whole lot of great action or tension.

    Watch Iron Man again. Then watch Dark Knight again. Tell me Iron Man is in the same class.

    I've been hoping this film would be a marked improvement over the first one and have better action sequences.

    • Re:First one (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jollyreaper ( 513215 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @11:32AM (#32000138)

      RDJ is charismatic. The first film was fun. It may be the best looking BluRay I own. But most of us went in with relatively low expectations and were impressed. That doesn't mean the first film deserved all the praise it got. It doesn't hold up really well to repeat viewings. There isn't a whole lot of great action or tension.

      Watch Iron Man again. Then watch Dark Knight again. Tell me Iron Man is in the same class.

      Iron Man is a perfect popcorn movie. You're absolutely correct, RDJ has tremendous charisma. He's one of those genuinely fun characters to watch. Plays Stark perfectly. There were also plenty of laughs built into the story. The only real weakness with the movie is that the villain was underdeveloped. But seeing as this was also an origin movie, there's only so much that can be shoehorned in. Good action, good laughs, a complete surprise. The whole premise of a super suit is absurd, naturally. And building one in a cave with scrap metal? Don't let Osama get a hold of this guy. But like any good movie of this nature, it embraced the absurdity and then followed through with it. So many moments of "Oh, wow. Now that's cool." Loved seeing him develop the idea and go through the mental process of accepting his new role.

      I saw it on a free preview and went in expecting to still feel ripped off. Was completely surprised. A light, fun, enjoyable movie that leaves you grinning like a 12-yr old when it's done. This really shouldn't be all that difficult to do but so many movies screw it up. As I understand it, the movie was sort of a happy accident. The producers said they spent so much time on developing the effects for the suit, they'd forgotten to write a story for the rest of the movie. All of RDJ's best lines were adlibbed, were not in the script. It really should have been a mess but somehow wasn't. My only fear is that they try to replicate this for the next movies and we end up with tedious, over-processed crap like the usual mindless comic book movies.

      • The only real weakness with the movie is that the villain was underdeveloped. But seeing as this was also an origin movie, there's only so much that can be shoehorned in.

        Does Iron Man really have an iconic archenemy? A Joker to his Batman? I'm not so sure.

        • The only real weakness with the movie is that the villain was underdeveloped. But seeing as this was also an origin movie, there's only so much that can be shoehorned in.

          Does Iron Man really have an iconic archenemy? A Joker to his Batman? I'm not so sure.

          Oxidization Man?

        • He didn't get on very well with the Mandarin...

        • The only real weakness with the movie is that the villain was underdeveloped. But seeing as this was also an origin movie, there's only so much that can be shoehorned in.

          Does Iron Man really have an iconic archenemy? A Joker to his Batman? I'm not so sure.

          I believe The Mandarin is probably the closest thing he has to a true nemesis.

          Beyond that he has a decent range of villains that've made things difficult for him, some of which with a personal grudge. Ultron usually fairs pretty well since he eventually learns to control Stark's armor, but he's someone else's nemesis.

          Then again, not every comic book character has a nemesis as closely tied as Batman's Joker. I'd say maybe 1/2 have something similar.

          Flash? A large rogue's gallery, though I *guess* one of

      • (I'm not joking here)

        You know, I was just reading your review, and thinking it was the perfect popcorn review. It had all the information you need, fairly light on spoilers (just the cave really), with fun language ("grinning like a 12-yr old"), spiced with some humour ("Don't let Osama get a hold of this guy.") and trivia ("It really should have been a mess but somehow wasn't.").

        If you weren't already at +5, I would suggest mods to mod you up!

    • Watch Iron Man again. Then watch Dark Knight again. Tell me Iron Man is in the same class.

      I can't hear you over the sound of Bale's Batman Voice.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dan667 ( 564390 )
      I actually like Iron Man better than the Dark Knight.
      • Likewise. Dark Knight was good, but overlong, with too many unnecessary bits, and too much pretension. Iron Man was a more cohesive experience.
    • Agreed. And to think some relatives won't even watch TDK because it's a "superhero flick", oh well... I've always thought of it as one of the greatest movies... with a superhero trown in. Or rather as "Joker Begins"

    • I agree. I liked Iron Man, and I think there are a few reasons it got such acclaim, but one of the major reasons was that expectations were low. I know I wasn't expecting it to be good, and low expectations lead to being pleasantly surprised. I think a lot of people were even more pleasantly surprised since, relative to Batman/Superman/Spiderman, Iron Man was downright obscure stuff.

      Sorry, I know someone here will get mad at the claim that Iron Man is obscure. Maybe he's your favorite superhero ever, b

      • Iron Man is popular in comic book circles, but I think it is fair to say that Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Punisher, Iron Man, etc. are second-tier heroes to the Batman, Superman, Spiderman, X-Men first-tier.

        The new Batman films (Nolan-verse as I call it) are good films in their own right. They aren't just good by superhero standards.

        Maybe I'm not entirely fair because The Dark Knight is a second film. Sometimes the second film in a superhero franchise moves away from the already known origin story and hits the

    • Watch Iron Man again. Then watch Dark Knight again. Tell me Iron Man is in the same class.

      You're right, they're not in the same class: Iron Man is a fun superhero movie with an interesting and likable actor playing the main character, while Dark Knight is a poorly edited mishmash of incoherent action sequences and dollar-store philosophy with a plastic mannequin in the title role.

      I understand that this may be a minority opinion. ;)

    • Watch Iron Man again. Then watch Dark Knight again. Tell me Iron Man is in the same class.

      I think Iron Man is the best comic-book hero movie ever made. It's at the top of its genre, from a long line of comic-book heroes.

      The Dark Knight is a fantastic drama, that just happens to be about Gotham's favorite hero. It's left the genre baggage behind and opened up a new kind of storytelling.

    • Iron Man and The Dark Knight are different kinds of movies, so its unfair to compare them. The only thing they have in common is they are both based on comic books.

      Iron Man was a fun comic book movie and TDK was more like a psychological thriller. Comparing them is like comparing "Silence of the Lambs" to "The Hangover"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Thing 1 ( 178996 )

      It doesn't hold up really well to repeat viewings. There isn't a whole lot of great action or tension.

      I've seen it about 20 times, straight through (~2 hours), and at least another 15 times watching the "Iron" parts (~45 min).

      Generally I don't do that with movies. I've seen Dark Knight exactly once. It was good, but Iron Man is amazing.

      I suppose they both speak to the geek in us; however, Dark Knight speaks to the geek with discipline (or as my grand master used to say, "disciprine") enough to hone his m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by npsimons ( 32752 ) *

      Watch Iron Man again. Then watch Dark Knight again. Tell me Iron Man is in the same class.

      You're right; Iron Man was way better ;-)

      You know what gets me about most superhero movies these days? They're trying to be "grown up". This wouldn't be so bad if their idea of "grown up" wasn't "darker and edgier [tvtropes.org]". I mean come on, Batman is about a guy who dresses up as a bat fighting against guys who dress up in bad Mexican wrestling masks. Taking it way too seriously isn't more adult, it's pathetic. Besides, no

  • Naively looking at Ironman (well, 1) as a science fiction movie (it does star a technology-loving closet-nerd after all) shows that it gets most science stuff wrong as usual.

    Ignoring the effects such harsh accelerations would have on a person (and the lack of an internal waste management system), it e.g. suffers from The One Secret Prototype syndrome. Technology is tightly coupled with the first implementation, and nobody but the creator understands it and nobody ever copied the blueprints. Research is don

    • Hey, THMS.

        I suspect you'd be as much fun at the movies as Chloe O'Brian from the series
      24 would be.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloe_O'Brian [wikipedia.org]
        Dry.

          Chill.

    • Naively looking at Ironman (well, 1) as a science fiction movie shows that it gets most science stuff wrong as usual.

      That was your first mistake. Iron Man was an action movie (and not an especially good one at that).

      Watch Iron Man again. Then watch Dark Knight again. Tell me Iron Man is in the same class.

      The mans got a good point. It'll never hold up against the Dark Knight but RDJ did a decent job with the character. I blame the script.

      • Iron Man was a much more enjoyable movie than Dark Knight.

        I would say that's only my opinion, but I wrote on wikipedia they use it as a standard of measurement nowadays, so it's established fact.

      • Agree with many other posters, I enjoyed Iron Man more than TDK. I even bought the movie and have watched it a ton (replay value). I saw TDK in the theaters once. That was enough.

    • Naively looking at Ironman (well, 1) as a science fiction movie (it does star a technology-loving closet-nerd after all) shows that it gets most science stuff wrong as usual.

      Ignoring the effects such harsh accelerations would have on a person (and the lack of an internal waste management system), it e.g. suffers from The One Secret Prototype syndrome. Technology is tightly coupled with the first implementation, and nobody but the creator understands it and nobody ever copied the blueprints. Research is done by the Lone Scientist, in this case at least a Good Guy and not a fringe groups which makes absurd advances on their own, and without anyone else noticing. Other effects of technology such as the quite advanced AI available and the power source per-se are ignored to concentrate on the action part. I wonder how well part 2 does in these areas.

      The trick for any sort of super-hero story is to have only a few absurd assumptions and then try to scrupulously follow logic in how they play out. It's just like with the usual science fiction idea of inventing a technology and seeing how things play out based upon it. Star Trek is an example of that done poorly. So they invent a transporter which is a matter disassembler/assembler. Well, what if you took something apart and put it back together differently? Use simple feedstocks to create complex products

      • Star Trek is an example of that done poorly. So they invent a transporter which is a matter disassembler/assembler. Well, what if you took something apart and put it back together differently? Use simple feedstocks to create complex products. Ok, that's the replicator. Kudos for them thinking of that. But this means you could also reverse aging by disassembling a person and reassembling them younger. This would completely change society and is overlooked by the writers.

        I'm going to hate myself for knowing this, but there was an episode in TNG, Season 6: "Rascals", where Picard and others were turned into children by a transporter accident.

        Iron Man is never really meant to be serious science. It may be founded in it, but it is really about a regular guy (compared to other superheroes) creating a suit that turns him into technological titan. Invulnerability, strength, speed, and as a side effect, saves/sustains his life. A lot of his traditional enemies are US Cold War en

      • But this means you could also reverse aging by disassembling a person and reassembling them younger. This would completely change society and is overlooked by the writers.

        Sure, if you wanted them to lose all of their memories from after the first scan. And if you had enough storage space for the older version. Or if you have some incredibly complex merging support for two independent physical models.

        Going from transporter to anti-aging machine is amazingly difficult and it's almost certainly easier to reverse ageing in half a dozen other ways than via complete disassembly and reassembly of the person.

    • Yeah but if they were limited to real physics and technology available today it would be a really boring movie.

  • Spoiler ! (Score:5, Funny)

    by godrik ( 1287354 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @11:29AM (#32000092)

    Tony Stark is Iron Man ! OMG SPOILER!

  • My Review Full of Spoilers (Score:5, Funny)

    by kenp2002 ( 545495 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @11:29AM (#32000108) Homepage Journal

    There is this dude. He's kewl. Then there is this chick. She's hot in a quirky kind of way. Then there is this other dude. He's bad-ass. Then there is this smarmy guy who wants to exploit the bad-ass dude. The bad-ass dude eventually double crosses the smarmy guy and total fucks with the kewl dude. The hot-in-a-quirky-way chick gets caught in the middle. Then there is this other dude who isn't quite as kewl as the kewl dude who is like "dude!" and the other dude is like "no dude" but "dude!", They team up to fight bad-ass dude all the while the chick, the kewl dude, the not quite as kewl dude deal inbetween relentless violence deal with periodic moments of character development. Eventually kewl dude wins.

    So was that a review of Iron Man 2, Robocop, Star Wars, Gone with the Wind, Star Ship Troopers, or Freddie vs. Jason?

    Feel free to include any other films this review may cover....

  • Iron Man 2 clips (Score:2, Informative)

    by bagsta ( 1562275 )
    Here [scifiwire.com] are five clips of IM2 which are not in the official trailers(there is a 30 seconds advertisement in the beginning of the clips).

  • Wake me up when Kick-ass 2 is out. Bloodless Bluescreen Battles are getting real old, real fast.

  • Boole (Score:2)

    by noz ( 253073 )

    Is tagging this article !spoilerfree the same as !!spoiler and !!!spoilerfree and !!!!spoiler, and perhaps spoiler?

  • What you don't get however, ... a comic book movie that can be mentioned in the same breath as The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 2 or X2

    All the Spider-man movies were deeply disapointing, except maybe the 3rd one, since I was still so bored from the 2nd one that I couldn't care less about it. Anyway, that takes alot of credibility from the review IMO, so I'm still hopeful of a 4+ star film.

  • a buddy of mine just did a cartoon short of how the first Iron Man should've ended. check it out: http://www.howitshouldhaveended.com/ [howitshouldhaveended.com]
  • In Russia we call these types VOBBBL (Restorer of Balance, Rich, Flying, Armored). In other cultures a superhero comes from the downtrodden masses, he/she suffers the same kind of abuse and injustice so the people associate themselves with him. But take for instance Batman, he used the system to make untold fortune, well beyond the hopes of an average person and then.. decided to impose his own kind of justice. Why do you like these kind of types?
  • ... is that you ?

  • It's in cinemas today where I live, according to the posters plastered all over the bus stops. Did I wake up in the alternate universe where the US cinematic release is AFTER Europe, or is that date wrong?

  • Dumbledore sacrifices himself at the end because he was so shocked to learn the Bruce Willis was a ghost THE WHOLE TIME and the soilent green he was eating was PEOPLE.....PEOPLE you damn dirty apes!!

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