The movie makers had the sense to tell Samuel L Jackson, "You're like an FBI guy, sort of, but otherwise, please just play badass motherf***** Sameul L Jackson." This is a big improvement over George Lucas casting him as a boring monk for three terrible movies.
Anyway, Robert Downey Jr does a good job as expected. The movie benefits from the Avengers ramp-up and you do get the sense that this is a small story couched in a larger one.
Here's my beef: The ending is pretty weak. You've watched trailers of Iron Man and War Machine fighting the robot drones for months now. You see racks of hibernating drones for an hour. We all know what's coming. And at the end, the good guys predictably just shoot a bunch of drones with lasers. Meh.
But they KNEW this wouldn't be interesting enough, so... they quickly encased another bad guy in (shocker) a bigger more evil Iron Man suit. I can't remember where I saw this before... oh, yeah, Iron Man 1.
This does not bode well for Iron Man's future. Here's what I mean:
Tony Stark/Iron Man is not the first movie hero to get bogged down in an endless swamp of fighting a "bigger badder mirror of himself" in the end of each movie. It also happened to Superman... and look where it got him:
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Superman 1: Superman mostly matches WITS with regular human Lex Luthor.
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Superman 2: Superman fights 2 evil Supermen and 1 evil Superwoman. It begins.
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Superman 3: Superman fights Evil Superman in a computer (with Richard Pryor?!)
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Superman 4: Superman fights... an Evil Teutonic Superman
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Superman Returns: The largest/least successful superhero movie in recent history.
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Superman was a great movie, and part 2 was great too, but it took a steep dive from then on. Not a good trend... Now...
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Iron Man 1: Fights evil business partner in a big silver evil Iron suit.
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Iron Man 2: Fights evil business enemy in a big silver evil Iron suit.
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What makes it even weirder is that given a year of development time, the bad guy (Vanko) opted to pass on armor and just built weapons. Why, in his rushed attack at the end, is he in a form-fitting clean Iron suit that looks as perfectly modeled and planned as genius Stark's most current model suit?
Oh well. Like I said, I liked the movie, but the end felt like a missed opportunity.
