Movie review: Iron Man 2

Let me sum up Iron Man 2 for you. In the middle, there's a scene where Nick Fury (unforgivably not played by Stephen Lang) tells Tony Stark that he needs to work on something, so his agents will be holding Tony captive in his house until he's finished with it. It's a good scene, with a witty location and Scarlett Johannson in a catsuit.

Then we see Agent Coulson from the first movie at Tony's house, where he tells Tony that he can't leave until he's done with the project. Then Agent Coulson says he has to leave, there's some continuity porn in New Mexico he has to investigate. It's a fun scene with a great wink to an Easter egg in the original.

Then in the next scene, Tony goes out to buy some strawberries.

Now, you've probably enjoyed all these scenes. You're probably also wondering why the hell they brought in Agent Coulson if he was going to leave five minutes later, and what was the point of SHIELD locking Tony down if he can apparently just walk right out the backdoor like it ain't no thang.

And that's the problem. Someone, somewhere, thought "Hey, we're doing a sequel. It has to be better than the original. The original had one story... what if we had ten stories? Then it would be ten times better!" And there you go. There's just so much STUFF that none of it has any impact or heft.

( Let's go down the numbers. )