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I already saw this movie but since I just bought an awesome brand new TV, I thought I might as well check it out again. Following the impressive success of the first installment which would launch the almighty Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was obvious that they would come up with a sequel and the expectations were even higher this time. Personally, I really liked the first movie (after all these years, it is still easily one of the best stand-alone super-hero features delivered by Marvel so far) above all because Robert Downey Jr's performance was just really awesome and completely entertaining. Unfortunately, with this sequel, the story was not really compelling, there was nothing actually really new and the characters were rather poorly developed. Apparently, there were quite some tensions between Jon Favreau and Marvel as they pretty much forced him to increase the links between this movie and the rest of the MCU at the expense of the coherence of the film's own plot. As a result, Favreau would choose to decline directing the 3rd installment. Concerning Mickey Route, he was a solid bad guy but, for some reasons, they also brought Sam Rockwell, also a fine actor, and while neither of them did anything wrong, two villains was probably too much too handle for this movie. In fact, there were probably too many characters/actors involved in this sequel (Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, John Slattery, Garry Shandling, Paul Bettany, Kate Mara, Leslie Bibb, Jon Favreau, Olivia Munn). On top of that, there was also a rather weak sub-plot about Tony Stark slowly dying because of the palladium that keeps him alive but it was rather half-baked and not really entertaining. Eventually, the only really interesting element in this movie was the introduction of Natasha Romanoff A.K.A. Black Widow. Indeed, even though some may have had some doubts about Scarlett Johansson pulling this off, she eventually completely nailed it and became instantly one of the iconic characters in the MCU. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, the whole thing was still fairly entertaining but there is no doubt that it is one of the weakest movies delivered by Marvel so far.
6/10
