Iron Man 2 - Rubbish Physics

When I told my housemate the other day that I was going to see Iron Man 2 he warned me to not "... get annoyed by the physics". "Silly Housemate" I thought to myself, I sat through Paycheck and survived, why would a Marvel superheroes adaptation - in which the laws of physics are routinely bent - irritate me so? Well, we shall soon see.

Iron Man 2 is - obviously - the sequel to Iron Man, in which Robert Downey Jr plays an eccentric arms manufacturer (Tony Stark) who gets held as a POW in Iraq and develops a powerful suit - the Iron Man suit - to allow himself to escape. In the intervening period between the films, Stark has used his suit to "privatise world peace". The US government are not happy about this and demand that he turn his weapon over to them. He doesn't want to play ball, and so premise of the sequel is set - a film that explores the relationship between the rights and responsibilities of the individual, corporations and the state. Or so I had thought.

After only 20 minutes you can tell that there's going to be no subtlety in this film, no grey areas or layers of plot - just robots smacking each other on the head and far too many A-list stars setting up future Marvel superheroes film franchises. We see Mickey Rouke suiting up and trying to kill Iron Man. Why? Who knows, but he's got a Russian accent so he's probably evil. We see Sam Rockwell as the head of a rival arms firm trying to copy the Iron man suit; he's probably evil too cos his robots are all faceless and gun-metal grey. We see Scarlett Johansson pouting in tight-fitting blouses; she must have some reason to be in the film other than to flirt with Tony Stark and wear tight clothes - mustn't she? Anyone?

The answer is no. There is no point to quite a lot of what goes on in Iron Man 2, no plot, no reason for many of the characters, no motivation behind what anyone does. It is in a film like this that my mind starts to wander, I start thinking about things like "Does the physics of this make any sense?". I decide that I don't want to give the writers a pass when they have their lead character INVENT A NEW ELEMENT to power his chest-mounted reactor core.

Perhaps more annoying than the brazen abuse of physics is the fact that they could easily avoid this by saying that Tony Stark had invented a new compound, or a new crystal - anything at all really, if only the people who made the film cared for anything other than their bottom line.

So my answer to them is no. No more plotless blockbusters. I enjoy battling robots and guns and explosions and lasers as much as the next nerdy 30-something, but I want to see a story at the same time!