“Iron Man 2” Is Like “Iron Man” But With Scarlett’s 2 And A “2” At The End

“Iron Man 2” was the in-flight entertainment on a nine-hour flight from England, so as someone who has huge struggles sleeping on a plane, I sort of had to watch it. Having seen the first movie and been kind of ambivalent about it, I didn’t go into the viewing with lofty expectations -- and I wasn’t disappointed.

Scarlett Johansson certainly added immensely to the scenery and Don Cheadle is one of my favorite actors and I find Sam Rockwell amusing, but at this point I just find Mickey Rourke creepy terrifying. The dynamic between Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark) and Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts) was a bit ill-defined in "Iron Man 2," by design I’m sure, so it was hard to get a handle on whether they were dating or not and how the flirting with Natalie/Natasha (Scarlett) was supposed to be taken.

But in the end, I simply couldn’t escape the impression that I had seen this all before -- and in a very real sense, I had. Basically, the plot goes something like this: dude is on top, dude makes some bad decisions, dude has a nervous breakdown, dude imposes self-exile, dude is at bottom, dude rallies, dude is back on top, dude sort of gets girl. And for me, there is no special effect that can overcome the feeling that you’ve seen this before … and didn’t like it the first time.