Iron Man (2)

When the first Iron Man came out, I expected it to be just bad.  Iron Man the superhero never really appealed to me - I didn't even know his background, so to me he was just some dude who was... made out of iron?  I guess?  That's so much lamer than spider powers or shooting lasers out of your eyes.  With no hope at all for the movie, I figured it would go the way of The Hulk and not be worth my time.


What I did want to see was Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  I loved Knocked Up and wanted more of that.  Plus that whole love thing... I like hearing what people have to say about it.  Good reviews, a promising premise, and appreciation of Apatow's previous work were likely to come together well.


One day I convinced Marie (I think it was) to go see Sarah Marshall with me.  We were at the Key, and naturally asked around to see who else we could drag along.  Madelyn was down, and we were working on Kellen.  "Can't we see Iron Man?" he pleaded.  I was opposed, Marie was torn.  Somehow we decided the easiest solution was to just go see both, which led to the first time I've ever snuck into a theater (or rather bought one ticket and stayed for two movies - but that's much less cool sounding).


Sarah Marshall came first and was just as I expected - awesome.  It was funny and raunchy but in a good way.  That is, it was not so raunchy I can't take it like some of Apatow's stuff.  Meanwhile it actually had something to say about relationships.  It totally delivered.


We giggled to ourselves as we walked down the hall to the Iron Man theater, arriving suspiciously early and taking our seats while the ushers were still cleaning up.  We talked about the last movie, and I prepared myself for the cool explosions of a bad action movie.  LITTLE DID I KNOW what was in store for me: the acting genius of Robert Downy Jr.  This was before I had seen him in anything before; I would see him in Charlie Bartlett about a week after Iron Man where he absolutely made the movie as a supporting actor.  I decided to see everything he'd ever been in, then promptly changed my mind when I realized how long the list was.


Iron Man immediately became my favorite non-Christopher Nolan Batman superhero movie.  It had a great script, good acting all around, The Dude jokes, a modern setting, and the amazing, amazing RDJ just stealing the show for a full two hours.  They even ended it by breaking the classic modern superhero trope of doing the secret identity thing for a few movies and just let the cat out of the bag right away AND the classic modern superhero trope of having all sorts of angst about the love interest and just let them hook up right away.  PLUS they did the Batman thing where everyone is just some messed up dude with technology instead of having super-powers.  So great.  I was totally blown away.


...


So.  A couple months ago the trailer for Iron Man 2 came out, and naturally I became interested in writing about it.  I actually started writing this post right when that trailer came out, but then college happened.  So you get it now.


Let's check out the trailer:
http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/iron-man-2/trailer


I can't embed it, but you should be able to follow that link if you want to actually see it.  What I see is this:  more of the the same.  Mind you, this is a very good thing.  More witty banter, more RDJ kicking ass, more Samuel L Jackson having an eye-patch... more of everything that was so fun about the first.  I'm pumped.  You should be too.


7 May 2010, here we come.