Iron Man 2 Review

 [Music] hi welcome to the dynamic duel podcast a weekly show where we review superhero films and debate the superiority between marvel and dc by comparing their characters in stat based battle simulations i’m marvelous joe and i’m his twin brother johnny dc and in this episode we are going to review the 2010 film iron man 2 directed by john favreau and starring robert downey jr it was the sequel to the highly successful iron man one did it live up to the original find out later on in this episode but the answer is no it was better than i remember though like i remember not liking this film when it came out but seeing it the other day it was better than i remembered it’s not bad it’s not great it’s good and we’ll talk all about it later on this episode before that we’re going to get into the comic book movie news from this past week there wasn’t much but we did get two awesome trailers both from the loki disney plus television show and from the upcoming animated dc film batman the long halloween part one as always we list our segment times in our episode description so feel free to check out the show notes if you want to skip ahead to a particular topic and up top as always if you guys have been listening to this show for a while and you enjoy our content there are multiple things that you can do as a listener to help support this podcast the first thing is to follow us on social media specifically instagram we’re trying to get to a thousand followers we post stories pretty consistently if you haven’t seen those but if we could hit 1000 we have a special treat for you guys the second thing you could do is rate us or review us on your platform of choice whether that be itunes or podchaser and the third thing of course is to join us on patreon where you get access to tons of bonus content including blooper reels and our monthly bracket brawls where we put a bunch of fictional characters against each other using our duel simulator yeah this month we’re finding out who the best sword wielder is yeah so we’re running duels against characters like blade and leonardo and link and darth vader it’s pretty awesome yeah definitely join us on patreon guys if you’re looking for a good time it’s where the party’s at thanks to everyone who shows us they care by supporting the show we always absolutely love making this podcast for you guys and appreciate anyone who gives back but with that out of the way quick to the no prize so no prize is an award that marvel used to give out up until the 90s to fans our version the dynamic duel no prize is a digital award that we post on social media that i personally draw for those who we feel gave the best answer to our question of the week last week’s question was in regards to the rebellion suicide squad trailer that we got last week comparing it to the previous week’s redband trailer we asked you guys which trailer from the film did you prefer the red band or rebellion and why and we got like two answers i don’t know if it’s because people just didn’t see both versions of the trailer or what happened but i post a question yeah i can’t blame you this time yeah you can’t so we have one honorable mention to give out as well as one no prize winner our honorable mention goes to matt estes who gave the answer hey guys matt estes here hey out of those uh two trailers i would have to say that i much prefer the uh black widow trailer because dc sucks and marvel rules oh [ __ ] dropping them truth bombs i mean i wouldn’t quite say this is an honorable mention more just like a mention um for one he didn’t even answer the question and two your face sucks my estus hey there is no need to get personal here he was not dissing you he was dissing dc no no anytime someone disses dc i take it very very personally great answer madistas love it keep doing you and i’m sure your face is fine but the winner of this week’s snow prize is mickey madden gehen who said hey guys this is meggy and my preferred suicide squad trailer was the rebellion trailer because of the characters greater display of their powers which i think is just a better introduction of these obscure characters for the general audience and i agree we mentioned that in the last episode how the rebellion trailer delved more into the characters powers and abilities and there was more action the red band trailer was more about james gunn’s r-rated dialogue and tone overall i thought the better cell was the rebellion trailer and i’m glad i wasn’t the only one congrats to mickey madden guillen for winning this week’s no prize uh if you the listener want a chance at winning your own no prize stay tuned to later on this episode when we’ll be asking another question of the week and now that that’s done on to the news all right this past week we got a look at the upcoming disney plus television show loki this trailer i mean it’s gonna be hard to talk about because the show seems so random nearly anything can happen so it seems almost pointless to conjecture what is happening at any given moment but it looks amazing like when marvel had its investors day and they showed all the different trailers from the upcoming shows i knew from then that this was going to be my most anticipated show really and i think i said that during our podcast episode where we talked about that but yeah that randomness makes it look really interesting and i love the performances already it looks so much unlike anything that i’ve personally ever seen and vastly different from any of the other marvel disney plush shows that have come out or will come out it kind of reminds me of legends of tomorrow but instead of you know the time masters you’re dealing with the time variance authority so you take a little bit of that you take a little bit of like the zonkiness of like maybe doom patrol put them together pure gold i think that’s what this will be and that’s actually a great compliment it’s definitely a centerpiece for tom hiddleston oh yeah now this is a different version of loki than we’ve been used to for the past couple of his appearances like this version of loki never went through the events of thor the dark world or thor ragnarok or avengers infinity war that’s right so he’s much more sinister he never really had that kind of like anti-hero kind of turn where we saw him fighting alongside his brother against malekith against hella and against thanos basically it turns out that he is a variant that has caused a distortion within the primary timeline creating a bunch of branching timelines that the time variance authority wants him to fix but it’s loki you can’t really make him do anything and this whole time it looks like he’s trying to escape them so that he got a nice cat and mouse angle going here it is a really interesting setup that they would have him correct his own mistakes knowing how unreliable he could be i definitely think there’s more to the story here the setup for the tv though is pretty weird it’s like 70s retro futuristic style kind of yeah yeah the interior decoration and the room where they asked loki to sign the paperwork with everything that he’s ever said it was so bizarre i really liked the gag where he was like this is ridiculous they print out a new [ __ ] and have him sign that too it’s always really cool to see how well owen wilson’s like kind of cool relaxed demeanor plays against loki’s kind of manic energy you know my favorite scene in the trailer is where you know loki’s saying tva is the circus and you’re the clowns and owen wilson’s like i love when you say stuff like that it makes you sound smart it’s so patronizing exactly i really like the part where he’s like dude i studied your entire life you’ve literally stabbed people in the back 50 times and loki’s like and i swear i’ll never do that again it’s great there are some interesting little like quick clips that we see of places that the tva and loki go like they’re on the spaceship at one part they’re on this airplane and another we see loki fighting with his daggers i just have to say how cool it is that tom hiddleston can do a double knife flip without even looking and catch the knives yeah that takes some skill we’ve seen that before in trailers but for some reason i was just like i need to try that is that why you have the bandages on your hands well i used pens there’s a part where it looks like they’re in this like dark castle which looks really cool the set design on all this looks amazing oh yeah the budget on this show looks insane along with the cinematography yeah it’s probably the most striking scene when loki and owen wilson’s character mobius are in this like old historical town and there’s like this destructive cloud approaching them and loki is just like smiling at him i was really curious as to like what the hell is going on here and people are like theorizing that they traveled back to pompeii when mount vesuvius went off and destroyed the italian city i’m not sure if that’s true it looks like it could be the case but they’re just going all over the place with this show and i’m here for it the release date for the show was revealed as june 11th so we’re gonna get it a few weeks after falcon and the winter soldier ends which sucks because i want to see it like as soon as possible but still it’s coming soon and just 11 days after loki’s premiere we get to see batman the long halloween part one for which we just received a trailer and i was surprised to see that the animation style is just like superman man of tomorrow and the upcoming justice society world war ii animated films yeah i really liked mine of tomorrow’s animation style so i’m glad to see that carrying forward it makes me think that these are all part of the same continuity which is awesome i love the fact that they would make the long halloween continuity it makes sense since it seems like they’re revisiting batman and harvey dense relationship like taking it back to the beginning we get to see his origins turning into two-face after batman and harvey dent tried to track down the holiday killer yeah the long halloween was essentially almost a sequel to frank miller’s batman year one so yeah it’s like year two for batman this whole thing where he kind of gets introduced to all of his different rogues it’s a great story i love the comic was it a pretty long story considering that this is going to be a two-parter yeah it was a 13 issue series done by jeff loeb and tim sale it was pretty dense there was a lot to it so i’m not too surprised that they split into two parts and they did the same thing for the dark knight returns animated film you know the first part kind of focused on batman and the joker and the second part focused on batman versus superman and you can kind of say that the death of superman and reign of the superman was also kind of a two-parter yeah it absolutely was yeah batman is going to be voiced by jensen ackles of supernatural fame yeah considering that we recently saw and reviewed batman under the red hood i kind of had a hard time hearing his batman and not thinking of jason todd i thought he did a great job just from the trailer i didn’t even hear jensen echols i just heard batman really okay so he didn’t have the same problem no no not at all josh dumas is gonna be harvey dent and david this mulching is gonna be the calendar man which is awesome he’s like perfect for that role the calendar man is so creepy and david de small chain kind of has a voice for that i guess what’s the difference between the holiday killer and calendar man you’ll have to see the film there’s a difference between the two okay calendar man is a villain that’s locked up in arkham asylum while the holiday killings are going on so batman goes to him to try and find out who is the real killer oh so is that the guy in the prison cell in this trailer cause i thought that was lex luthor no yeah that was the calendar man you could tell because he has like these roman numerals tattooed on his head okay kind of like zazz who like etches tallies into his skin not really okay catwoman is voiced by nya rivera and this was actually the last work that she did before she died and that that was a tragic story yeah her passing was really sad and unfortunate but she does seem like she had a great catwoman voice yeah totally i love the look they went with for this film actually i love all of the different character designs i love this animation style a lot because it’s so different for bruce tim’s style which made all the characters sort of look the same like there were only like five figure variants with this style everyone sort of has a different like facial structure and body structure it’s pretty awesome i really love seeing batman stories where a lot of his rogues gallery take part kind of like batman hush that was a great movie this one looks pretty good too yeah yeah this is sort of like the ultimate story if you want to see all of batman’s rogues even more so than hush oh wow now in the comics it took a year for the original readers to find out what was going on i really hope they don’t make us wait that long for part two because they don’t have a release date for that yet wait actually i’m reading right here it’s going to be released in fall 2021 so perfect there you go the whole trailer is really mysterious and has a lot of quick cuts and stuff like that but that’s the whole point because this whole thing is like a year-long mystery and i loved it the trailer totally sold me i’m definitely looking forward to this film but that brings us to our question of the week since so few of you answered our last question about which trailer you preferred we’re gonna double down on ya this time we’re asking what trailer did you prefer loki’s official trailer 2 or the first official trailer for batman the long halloween part 1. they both come out around the same time based on these trailers which one gets you more hyped to answer visit dynamicduel.com and click on the red microphone button in the bottom right hand corner which will prompt you to record as a voicemail your message can be up to 30 seconds long and don’t forget to leave your name in case we include you on the podcast we’ll pick our favorite answer and draw that person a dynamic duel no prize that we’ll post to social media be sure to answer before april 17th but that does it for all the news for this episode so let’s go ahead and get into our main event where we review the 2010 film iron man 2. all right iron man 2 the film came out in 2010 and was directed by john favreau and stars robert downey jr both men returning from the incredible first film iron man 1 was a huge success both financially and critically and this sequel really tried to recapture that magic it didn’t quite do that despite its best efforts due to its weaker story beats clunky dialogue and similarly anticlimactic villain now if you’ve never seen the film before i want to give you a heads up at the top of this review that this will be a spoiler review so you should definitely check it out i would recommend it odds are you have it’s been like 11 years yeah i mean if you haven’t seen this movie where have you been but definitely check it out because as all of our reviews do we talk about the whole film now while the first film’s narrative focused on responsibility and inventiveness the main theme of iron man 2 was legacy with great responsibility comes great legacy in this movie tony stark is dying due to the palladium in his chest’s arc reactor putting toxins in his bloodstream since he knows he’s about to die he starts making arrangements including setting up the stark expo for the next generation of geniuses giving his company stark industries to his former assistant pepper potts and giving his spare armor the mark ii to his friend james rhodes he struggles with his mortality in the worst way possible reverting to his old irresponsible self from the beginning of the first film except now the national spotlight is on him from politicians looking to confiscate the iron man armor and to top it off he contends with the villain whiplash who felt that the arc reactor technology was his father’s and tony learns of the legacy his own father left him to perfect the ark reactor in concept there’s actually a lot of great story stuff here maybe too much because in reality it wasn’t quite executed as well as it could have been as well as it should have been as it kind of juggles its way along into the final act of the film yeah all of the different storylines we have going on in this film totally makes sense as a continuation of the storylines established in the first film they’re very interesting when you combine that with trying to introduce characters like black widow and setting up the avengers at the very end it gets a little clunky yeah it definitely does there’s a lot that the story has to contend with and it doesn’t quite flow in a way that feels right like i mentioned at the top of the episode i liked this film a lot more seeing it this past week than when i first saw it in theaters i think if you got rid of characters like black widow nick fury the whole avengers setup this film would have flowed a lot better yeah you might be right the main issue that i have with the film is that when the legacy theme resolves when tony synthesizes the new element that can substitute palladium the key to the discovery was preposterously hidden by howard stark in the architectural design of the stark expose layout and it raises a lot of questions like how did howard know tony would revisit the arc reactor technology and revisit the stark expo i mean like the arc reactor technology seemed to be doing fine as it was especially when tony was able to miniaturize it to power his suit so like why would the arc reactor need the new element unless howard predicted that someone would be putting it in their body and it would poison them yeah it’s all very convenient yeah his father said that the new arc reactor was going to change the world and kickstart an energy race that would dwarf the arms race but it’s like no that didn’t happen i guess tony did use repulsor tech to power the avengers tower and some shield stuff but we literally never hear about it otherwise outside of the context of the iron man armor now in the movie’s overall run time this new arc reactor stuff takes up only a fraction of the second act but it is the key moment of the film it solves the hero’s dilemma and pushes forward the story toward the final confrontation and having this far-fetched plot hole here in the story it does sink a lot of the film like in this moment we hear howard tell tony he’s his greatest creation and it’s never addressed again and we have tony visit pepper’s office with him trying to tell her that he needs her why where did that come from there’s a lot here in this section of the story that feels missing and kind of haphazardly put together i would definitely say that there were two halves to the story you know there’s a pretty definitive cut halfway through where it literally fades to black and then it kind of picks up with iron man in the donut right yeah i definitely think the first half was stronger than the second half well i don’t know entirely about that because despite the fact that film clumsily works its way into the third act i think that’s where the movie really shines in the last part because it has the incredible action scene with iron man a war machine teaming up in the best way possible against some robotic drones and the introduction of black widow fighting justin hammer’s security both of those scenes were so damn fun and enjoyable i felt like standing up in my seat and like fist-pumping the air when stark and roadie’s helmets closed and they started like blasting the [ __ ] out of those drones like it brought a tear to my eye it was so perfect it was everything you wanted to see in an iron man movie the black widow scene where she like [ __ ] kneecapped that dude and then strung up the other electrocuted that one guy and then mace the guy at the end it was a great introduction to the action hero that black widow is i thought the action was pretty great in this movie overall like those two scenes and the suitcase armor scene on the monaco speedway that generated a lot of goodwill for me to overlook a lot of the movies flaws and still really enjoy and be entertained by the movie yeah the action was pretty cool i think that’s what really makes these iron man movies for sure yeah the iron man armor is just so flashy i want a suit of armor if i don’t have a suit of armor before i die i’m gonna be [ __ ] pissed yeah it’s like the same thing with me and like the batmobile eh no one cares about that oh yeah i’m gonna drive around in my car iron man can like [ __ ] fly oh the batmobile has ejector seats dude don’t worry about that okay i’m getting where i need to go [Laughter] i remember watching this movie for the first time and thinking really that’s how they’re going to adapt demon in the bottle but watching it again i actually thought it was a pretty good adaptation of it well i mean it wasn’t like a faithful adaptation it was about as faithful as the studio could probably get because in the comics the story involves tony sinking into alcoholism losing his company to obadiah’s stain and rhodey taking over the role of iron man and it led to like tony getting sober and he started a new company and he reclaimed iron man and created a new suit of armor the war machine armor for roadie it was a great story but that was essentially a story about addiction and marvel studios i don’t think really wanted to go down that route even though i i do think it would have been pretty compelling seeing as robert downey jr used to be a former addict but maybe it would have hit too close to home for downey um and definitely wouldn’t have been marketable to families so like his debauchery stemmed more from his like hedonistic lifestyle which in this film kind of stand from him facing his own mortality as opposed to you know being an addict i do think this is probably about as well as they could have adapted that whole demon of the bottle storyline one of the biggest positives for this movie i think was its cast from the leading roles to the supporting characters now you have greats like mickey rourke don cheadle sam rockwell is amazing they all do a lot i think to save what’s wrong with this film and let’s discuss them in the character breakdown so tony stark aka iron man was played by robert downey jr i think it’s been really interesting to revisit these films and watch the course of tony stark’s character arc the events of the avengers films on iron man 3 did a lot to mature him but here it was fun to see him again as like the free willing tony stark you know being his lovable cocky self of course it is a regression here due to the fact that he’s secretly dying but i do miss this less serious tony stark and robert downey jr makes him so much fun to watch yeah this film came out prior to disney’s acquisition of marvel yeah so i feel like robert downey jr got away with some of the more like off-color jokes that he could have under a disney banner like what like when they’re talking about how the reporter did a spread on him and she wrote a story too that was great i mean i don’t know he did make the hide the zucchini joke later on in avengers age of ultron so i think disney would have let that slide for sure but he definitely did get more tame in later films i do think that robert downey jr had one of the most touching moments of his entire iron man performance in this film when his father tells him that he was his greatest creation and his mouth just kind of drops you know it was quick and it was never addressed again but i do think that you really felt what he was going through in that moment because tony stark has always been a character who has sought the approval of his father and that aspect of the character got a lot of closure within endgame when he went back in the past and spoke to howard right i always think mortality is a really interesting theme especially for superheroes to deal with and think how tony stark was dealing with his own mortality he could have done something about it he could have told someone but he didn’t because you know he thought he was invincible in this armor yeah he thought that he would be the smartest guy to solve this and that no one else could and in the end he was right because he was able to cure his condition by synthesizing the new element but also he isolated himself you know he has a support system in pepper and rhodey and he chose not to i guess burden them with the knowledge of his upcoming death but it was selfish of him to do that and i think at the end he learned the lesson that it is better to work with others you know he ends up giving rody the war machine armor and they team up to win the day and he ends up ultimately confessing his love for pepper potts right right he explicitly says to rody when they first fight in his house that he doesn’t need a sidekick and by the end of the film he’s like i need a sidekick let’s do a you know air high five yeah and you can also say that maybe tony stark was keeping his condition a secret because politicians were trying to take his armor and he probably felt that if they knew that he was about to die they might have an easier time confiscating his work yeah i can see that he probably felt it was better to give to someone he trusted in roadie let’s talk about ivan vonko aka whiplash who was played by mickey rourke now in the first film quite a bit of tony stark’s dialogue was improvised on the spot by robert downey jr who had a ton of creative input on his character here it seems like they gave those same liberties to others as well trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle but here’s the thing we learned in this film that not everyone can do it like robert downey jr turns out that guy is kind of a creative genius with tremendous instincts on what works and what doesn’t mickey rourke doesn’t really have those instincts it looks like no i think very few people do sam rockwell definitely does ryan reynolds it seems like mickey rourke was going for a true like dramatic performance like he’s trying to win a [ __ ] oscar or something yeah but uh it just came across as boring yeah i mean like mickey rourke he is a genius actor in his own right but probably with what’s on the page it was like here he was trying to out eccentric robert downey jr and like you hear stories about the production where he was like insistent on just being in his underwear during stark’s visit to the jail and the whole bird thing like mickey rourke was packing on just so many layers trying to make his character seem interesting but sometimes less is more stripped down doesn’t necessarily mean one-dimensional and i think rorke’s character kind of lost itself in his weirdness so the underwear and the bird thing was his idea yeah why layers man whiplash is like ogres onions which are like ogres okay it’s no surprise like he’s gone later on to bash marvel they’re probably like dude this guy’s [ __ ] weird let’s not work with him again yeah it’s like he was trying to be the star of the show like a lot of his stuff apparently got cut but you know what he had quite a bit of screen time in this film as much as you would give any other villain you know and he just did less with that just trying to be so mysterious i guess and it’s weird because like mickey rourke is a really good actor i i really liked his his role as marv in the sin city films and as the wrestler like those were really good performances he just wasn’t cut out i think for this blockbuster material i mean it’s possible he has had more success in indie films now is my understanding that the character of whiplash in this film is like an amalgamation of several iron man villains yeah whiplash and crimson dynamo ivan vanko is not a character from the comics his father anton vanko is the russian villain known as crimson dynamo who’s like the russian iron man a lot of iron man’s villains are like guys in armor and i think the film was trying to present a different villain from the iron monger from the first film right they didn’t want to do just another suit and yet they did yeah they kind of did toward the end whiplash though is definitely unique with his weapons crimson dynamo we should totally do a duel between him and rocket red rock red’s from dc yeah i mentioned him in my kilowog backstory a few episodes ago okay oh when kilowog was like living in russia yeah he’s essentially a russian iron man exactly like crimson dynamo yeah maybe we’ll do that down the line i think it would almost be cooler to do a whiplash duel just because whiplash is so unique although you know i guess you could say that he’s a lot like omega red with his weapon set and omega red is definitely the more interesting character i don’t know but i like the way they portrayed whiplash’s powers in this movie i thought transferring the arc reactor power into these ropes could be used in a variety of interesting ways i just don’t think they explored that enough like he was frankly too easy to beat both of the times iron man fought him yeah way too [ __ ] easy i mean come on yeah the first time they fought iron man was pretty much just able to tank the whips energy you know exactly they’re over here slashing through like race cars and stuff like that and yet it doesn’t just cut right through iron man’s armor it was inconsistent yeah that was a mistake and then at the end whiplash was actually wiping the floor with iron man and war machine until they shot repulsors at each other and he was over in one shot and then he killed himself kind of ridiculous it was a little weak let’s move on to james rhodes aka war machine played by don cheadle now don cheadle i think is the anti-mickey rourke like he didn’t come to compete with robert downey jr it didn’t seem like there was any ego involved he was understated complementary to the lead and just really cool i think from like the laid-back way he addressed the senate committee to the war machine weapons scene when they’re equipping it when he finally donned the armor and fought alongside tony that to me was the ultimate iron man moment i loved war machine in this movie so much they did an even better job with him than i thought they were going to given the teas from the previous film yeah war machine definitely has a good look and i thought don cheadle did a great job in the suit and out of the suit i do think that don cheadle showed in later films that he is capable of going toe-to-toe with robert downey jr when it comes to improvisation mm-hmm yeah he does a much better roadie than i think terence howard did i don’t think he played all too dissimilar of a roadie than terence howard at least in this film yeah he definitely grew to become his own character but i do think that terence howard is also a great actor and i think he did a great job as rhodey in the first film i don’t think he would have done anything too terribly different from what don cheadle did in this movie and i think that terence howard and robert downey jr had great chemistry but again so did don cheadle and robert downey jr so i can’t quite say i have a preference between the two actors i do think it was unfortunate that the recast happened but i’m also happy it happened because don cheadle’s [ __ ] great you know in everything that he does and all the performances i’ve ever seen him in he’s every bit as brilliant an actor as robert downey jr and i really can’t wait to see him lead his own show in armor wars coming up on disney plus i think that’s going to be amazing and they announced that it also stars justin hammer played by sam rockwell another brilliant actor that’s going to be a really fun show i’m so sad that tony stark died in the mcu because i loved all of the moments between tony stark and justin hammer yeah they were fantastic yeah so good like justin hammer actually does manage to play off of tony stark’s eccentricities in a hilarious way because he’s a smart villain but he’s also just so like incompetent like he’s a wannabe you know he’s mostly comic relief here but his character does have a bit of malice in him you see it in little spurts well tony stark keeps stealing his thunder yeah and he’s totally driven by jealousy but since this movie justin hammer’s kind of been in the wings off to the side in prison like he did show up in the all hail the king one shot but i really can’t wait for him to get his time to shine as the lead villain in armor wars i definitely think justin hammer was more than just a one-and-done villain definitely glad he’s returning i kind of hope that with shield still gone in the mcu that justin hammer sets up the hammer organization as kind of a rival to sword to be the new tech and espionage force in the world is hammer an acronym like shield and sword uh yes and no hammer was set up by norman osborne in the comic books after the fall of shield during the dark rain storyline hammer was supposed to stand for something but they never quite figured out what it stood for they just wanted the name hammer and then norman osborne was like make an acronym for it and then they never did really yeah geez but i always thought it would make more sense for justin hammer to be in charge of that as opposed to norman osborne given that they haven’t introduced norman osborne in the mcu yet yeah that makes total sense let’s move on to natasha romanov aka black widow who is played by scarlett johansson i’ve always had mixed feelings about scarlett johansson in this role and i think most of my negativity possibly stems from this film in this movie her role is to monitor stark and his debilitation on behalf of shield but she acts like she’s trying to seduce him yeah like when they’re getting ready for his party she’s like is that dirty enough for you and i do whatever i wanted with whoever i wanted it doesn’t make sense given her mission you know and fortunately he doesn’t really go for it because apparently he’s vying for pepper potts so natasha seems like needlessly seductive i really i think she’s just there to seduce the audience exactly and far be it for me to say they made scarlett johansson too sexy but it does seem gratuitous absolutely and therefore natasha romanov seems kind of shallow in this film thankfully they gave her the badass action scene you know to kind of compensate for that and that you know they developed her character more in the avengers films but this black widow i think in this movie is nearly unrecognizable from the natasha we have today and the version that we see in the upcoming solo black widow movie is definitely never going to say is that dirty enough for you or like take off her dress in the back seat in front of like that’s fine i don’t mind that i’m surprised by marvel actually with this interpretation of the character it seems so exploitive and reductive absolutely i don’t think you could get away with that today no no no no she was very one-dimensional absolutely reductive is the best term because natasha romanov is so much more than just eye candy you know what’s funny though when i saw this movie in the theater for the first time and that shot of scarlett johansson ducking underneath the boxing ropes to get into the ring that close up on her face right when that happened the theater was completely silent because we’re all watching the movie but one guy in the theater was like oh yeah the entire theater started erupting in laughter because of this guy pretty much creamed his jeans while watching the movie that’s disgusting it was hilarious but every time i see this movie i think of that moment when everybody laughed it was great let’s move on to pepper potts who was played by gwyneth paltrow now i actually really liked going with paltrow’s pepper potts from the first movie because i think she and robert downey jr had amazing fantastic chemistry despite not being romantic interests explicitly in that film since that movie i haven’t really liked her character really i thought she was great in this film i mean to me it just never really made sense that tony stark and her would end up together because she was always more like his mom than his partner i mean yeah he’s being reckless and immature and someone has to be a foil to that someone has to put him in his place i guess really everyone was a foil to that yeah but would you consider that foil viably i think so i mean opposites attract why not to me it came out of nowhere when they kissed at the end that is true it did there was a whole lot of lead up like they were bickering and then he kissed her and it was like what like i wasn’t feeling it and even rhodey in that scene he was like it was awkward looks like two seals fighting over a grape i felt that i didn’t get that joke well imagine two seals fighting over a grape yeah it doesn’t really work but it was funny i’m not really too familiar with pepper potts like from the comics or anything like that to me i thought her character was completely justified and made sense in this film and i still thought she held her own against you know robert downey jr performance wise gwyneth paltrow in her own right is you know fairly eccentric she sells a candle that smells like her vagina so who the [ __ ] would buy that exactly but yeah she is a talented actress for sure i’m not denying that but the romance thing kind of just i don’t know i can’t get over it maybe it’s because i’m too close to it like i know that pepper potts in the comics married happy hogan what yeah they really never went down that road with this franchise i guess they just needed some kind of romantic interest for tony stark in these films so why not pepper potts yeah like i said they have great chemistry so makes sense the last character i want to talk about is nick fury who was played by samuel l jackson now he had a small role in this movie but it was here that he made his first appearance as the character outside of the end credit stinger from the first film at the time when i watched this film his version of nick fury struck me as too laid back for the head of an international spy organization yeah more sam jackson and les nick fury exactly yeah but as the films progressed you know he became the more serious authoritative and intellectual nick fury we know and love from the comics this version of the character was based on the ultimate nick fury from the ultimates comics whose likeness was actually based on samuel l jackson so him playing the role in this film was literally perfect casting and i mean nick fury junior in the comics right now kind of looks like sam jackson yeah that’s true nick fury jr is the son of the original nick fury who was the primary version of the character within the marvel comics universe dating back to sergeant fury and the howling commandos he had a son nick ferry jr who’s filling that nick fury role within the comics now which i like he’s a bad mother shut your mouth well i’m just talking about nick fury yeah yep sam jackson also played shaft all right that’s all the characters let’s go ahead and get into our story highlights so at the beginning of the film we see anton vanko die as tony stark announces himself as iron man ivan vonko grieves his father and then builds an ark reactor which i thought was actually a fantastic setup for the premise of this film right because in the first film we see how hard it is and how difficult it is for the stark scientists to build their own version of the arc reactor yeah so in order to build one you have to be a pretty [ __ ] brilliant guy it didn’t hurt they had the blueprints for it though fair but that was of course for the large version not the miniaturized version true true true from there we go to the stark expo which tony stark is putting on as a way to introduce new products and inventions to the world as part of his legacy that he’s gonna leave because he’s secretly dying due to his blood toxicity from the palladium in his chest i thought it was a really fun reintroduction to tony stark from the first film just so much pomp and pop and flashiness just everything we love about the character from there we learn more about stark’s mortality he ends up giving his company to pepper potts i really want to have a work room like tony stark has with all those holograms around yeah the way he’s able to use them yeah i would just be playing mini games all day just trash one of your projects and like throw it at the wall it’s like boom two points yeah that was cool we meet natalie rushman who is the notary overseeing the signing over of the company to pepper potts and tony stark’s like i want one i’m gonna make her my assistant and really that’s kind of where the seduction could have ended like i could see why she was being sexy to get in as stark’s assistant in order to monitor him more closely but after that you know it was just gratuitous it didn’t make sense from there we go to the monaco historic grand prix where in his impulsiveness tony stark decides to race one of the grand prix cars that’s crazy i mean it was probably on his bucket list or something but enter whiplash who comes onto the scene and just creates havoc blowing up the cars nearly killing tony stark before he gets a hold of his suitcase armor which i thought was an amazing easter egg from the suitcase armor in the comics now there it was an actual suitcase that the armor was actually stored in it wasn’t like this like transformer type of thing i really like the way they interpreted it for this film and the fact that it was like the silver centurion armor too so much fan service yeah yeah i think that’s definitely one of tony stark’s cooler suits and it was a shame to see it go so quickly yeah a lot of his armor mechanisms were like one and done you know but it was also cool that he was constantly like evolving that i do not get how pepper and happy survived this whole thing because whiplash was just shredding that car one of those two should have been decapitated yeah i don’t get how whiplash was able to survive being slammed into the side barricade now i know those things have some give in case the cars crash into them so they’re not entirely solid but he was freaking crushed by that car yeah how are his legs not like shattered yeah doesn’t make sense but eventually iron man defeats whiplash and whiplash goes to jail tony stark visits him in jail and learns that whiplash’s goal was not necessarily to kill tony stark but to show the world that he was not invincible which was kind of awesome it’s much more sinister of motivation than just to outright kill him he’s trying to systematically break the character down in a larger way because he is so much of a celebrity so being able to take down his image first was really clever yeah and then he ends up teaming with justin hammer who breaks ivan out of jail and is like go after his legacy now i’ve seen a lot of cool like breaking out of jail scenes this has to be one of the more lame ones i feel like really yeah yeah i mean he just kind of like walked out of his cell it blew up and then there were like people there to bag him and kidnap him exactly like why not just give him the [ __ ] key they did give him the [ __ ] key like i just saw a prison escape scene from the falcon of the winter soldier that was so much better than what they did here that’s true actually that was really well done in really just about the same amount of time yeah yeah yeah so after justin hammer and whiplash team up in a pretty funny scene we go to stark’s birthday party where he gets too drunk in the iron man armor he does make some funny jokes like where he pisses the armor that was great it makes total sense that it would operate kind of like how astronauts are able to pee in their suits you know and then it gets filtered we just does it in front of everyone yeah yeah but he does get very irresponsible with the suit accidentally discharging his repulsors and playing skeet with champagne bottles and stuff like that yeah as much as he was trying to tell the senate that it wasn’t a weapon it is the thing is like a lethal weapon and the fact that he’s just firing rounds in the middle of a party around everyone i’m surprised no one got hurt speaking of the senate scene i kind of skipped over that what did you think of that i thought it was kind of hilarious to see how far back like all of the other different countries were in developing their own stark armor especially the footage of justin hammer trying to create his own yeah he’s like and turned and the guy like snaps his spine he’s like oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] and he’s like i want to point out that the pilot survived that test that was also the introduction of don cheadle as rhodey yeah and i like how he kind of addressed it in the line where he’s like i’m here get over it let’s move on yeah real quick really effective yeah and the whole senate scene in general i thought made a lot of sense it felt very like real world like if this iron man armor did exist the us government probably would try to confiscate it for their own purposes yeah it was a precursor to the accords from captain america’s civil war so it’s surprising to see how much tony stark had changed in between these two films where basically in this movie he’s like you can’t have the armor you know i don’t work for you i privatized world security and then in the later film he was so humbled by the ultron incident and going through the wormhole and stuff like that he completely 80s and is like we should be held accountable i thought larry sanders gave a great performance as like the snooty senator yeah he was funny like when he was like [ __ ] you stark that was great exactly and of course we learned later on that he’s a hydra agent yeah that was cool yeah that was interesting yep so at the end of the party scene rhodey dons the mark ii armor in an attempt to put a stop to tony stark’s antics and they fight which was a pretty cool scene it was really cool seeing the mark ii armor versus the iron man armor just in their different like sheens and how they seem to be so equal like when they got into that little punching contest it just showed how futile it was to punch iron man i thought that was great the suit was indestructible so they were able to do literally anything and everything to each other without really harming each other until it came down to the repulsor blasts i knew right when i saw that happen that that was gonna play a factor in the final battle i didn’t realize it was gonna play as big a factor as it did yeah but i saw that coming i thought that was a great setup so rhodey leaves with the armor and the morning after tony stark is approached by nick fury who reveals that they know about his palladium condition and that he should be able to fix it if he studies his father’s and anton vanko’s research because as it turns out howard and anton vanko built the arc reactor together and anton tried to sell it secretly howard found out and had him deported to russia where he was bitter ever since fury encourages tony stark to solve the riddle of his heart which he begins by viewing the notes and tapes of his father where he learns that his father really did love him and it was in those videos where howard stark you know essentially points to his diorama and says you know this is the key to our future including tony in to the fact that he has a hidden design within this model right meanwhile war machine is getting his armor armed by justin hammer [ __ ] love this scene where don cheadle is like what are you gonna do for me and sam rockwell pulls out all these guns the way he describes them is just done so well especially the way he describes the ex-wife was so fantastic and the badass line at the end where don cheetos like i want all of it i was like yes yes like the minigun all those weapons i knew it was gonna be so great yeah i remember seeing that moment in the trailer i was like that’s that’s cool that’s war machine hell yeah it is after a visit to pepper potts tony stark realizes that the new element that he needs is hidden within the architectural design of the stark expo so he uses the diorama of the grounds to model the new element and then he synthesizes it using a particle accelerator in his basement now i don’t know how new elements are synthesized i don’t know if you use particle accelerators and things like that but uh sure you know i’ll take the movie at its word i just love it when tony stark was like do you see that here it kind of looks like an atom i was like no it [ __ ] doesn’t what are you talking about those hologram scenes are always pretty cool though i wish they would have said what the element was like did he recreate like vibranium or something like that no it wasn’t vibranium but they never say what the element is starkium starkium yeah that sounds about right [Laughter] from there tony stark gets a threatening call from ivan vanko so he flies over to the stark expo where justin hammer is giving his presentation of the new drones that whiplash created for him which i thought was actually a pretty cool presentation sam rockwell knows how to dance that dude has the most amazing footwork i’ve ever seen in my damn life i want to learn how to do that it was impressive he’s one of my favorite actors i think yeah yeah totally when iron man arrives the drones go haywire and they start attacking him and everybody across the expo the war machine armor is also compromised given that it was given a software upgrade by hammer industries so war machine and the drones chase iron man through the skies and young peter parker makes an appearance allegedly yeah allegedly the kid that is wearing the iron man mask is peter parker and that was kind of confirmed to be canon i guess by tom holland and robert downey jr and because they say it is we’ll just say it is sure yeah meanwhile black widow is breaking into hammer industries to get ivan vonko and she kicks ass and she manages to hack into war machine suit and erase the problematic virus with war machines virus gone he can control the suit again and the two team up in again the greatest iron man action scene of all time when he’s back to back with war machine and they’re just taking it to the drones tearing them apart like they were nothing whiplash flies in and you know they fight for approximately 15 seconds before they do the repulsor trick and it ends almost right away that was real disappointing i actually thought the drone fight was better than the end whiplash fight ivan vonko sets a charge to detonate all of his drones that are still remaining including himself and so tony has to go save pepper who’s standing next to one of these drones he saves her flies her up to her rooftop and then professes his romantic feelings for her from there we go to a scene between tony stark and nick fury where we learned that iron man is not going to be part of the avengers team but he’s just going to be used as a consultant which at the time i was really disappointed by i was like what the [ __ ] are you talking about iron man has to be part of the avengers what the hell are they doing they’ve never really led anywhere that’s not true uh it led to the end credit scene of the incredible hulk where they used robert downey jr as the consultant to offend general ross into not using emil blonsky aka the abomination as an avengers member i don’t remember that that was explained in the one-shot call to the consultant that was their way of rationalizing why it was tony stark that appeared in the incredible hulk as opposed to anyone else i don’t even know that was a one shot i’ve never heard of that oh you should watch it yeah it’s called the consultant i’ll show it to you is it starring tony stark no it actually starters phil coulson okay yeah tony stark agrees to be the consultant and waives his retainer fee if senator stern gives him and brody their medals for their actions at the expo i love how you poked tony stark with the pen it was like it’s amazing how annoying a little prick can be that’s such a great dig such a great line and that’s the end of the movie uh after the credits we got our very first look at mjolnir the hammer of thor and i remember seeing the design of that hammer for the first time in this movie and just being blown away it looks like how it did in the comics but also slightly futuristic i was so excited when i saw that shot of thor’s hammer and it was also cool how in the nick fury tony stark scene we also got to see that snippet of footage from the incredible hulk movie so it was like everything was starting to come together for the avengers toward the end of this movie we also saw like the prototype captain america shield in this film yeah which tony stark hilariously used just to prop up and level that particle accelerator yeah yeah do you know what that was a reference to the captain america shield in that scene in the first movie the visual effects artists snuck in a prototype captain america shield in the background scene of tony stark’s lab when he was removing his armor so they kind of referenced that gag and used it as an easter egg in this movie huh i just remember being so excited walking out of this movie not just by what i had seen you know those end action scenes were great the flaws of the movie didn’t really register with me until i really thought about the film later but i also just remember being really thrilled about the upcoming films to come the film was really fun it obviously does have some issues that prevent it from being great but to me the movie provided enough entertainment especially through its cast especially robert downey jr and it provided enough great action and did a great job of teasing what was to come for the mcu so i give it three and a half stars i think i would have given it three stars the first time i saw this but watching it again you’re right it was a lot of fun and it’s kind of great going back seeing the early stages of the mcu and how everything was coming together so yeah i agree 3.5 stars is a good score that does it for this review let us know what you thought about the movie by writing to us at dynamicduelpodcast gmail.com or by visiting us on facebook instagram or twitter remember you can find links to all of our accounts by visiting our website dynamicduel.com and again please follow us on instagram specifically we’re trying to get to 1 000 followers like i know a ton of other shitty accounts that have way more followers than us yeah i don’t get it what the hell we’re not social media inc correctly i guess not what are we doing wrong but also on our website dynamicdull.com you can find a link to our merch store where we sell t-shirts hoodies stickers and more with our dynamic duel no prize artwork now jonathan rejoined for this episode i’m actually drawing a character that i’ve wanted to draw for a long time doctor doom oh yeah he’s not really related to this film sort of he wears armor well in the comics he later became iron man after tony stark died that’s right the infamous iron man is that right yeah yeah there’s a tie-in it works well i’m looking forward to that our next episode will be a duel episode where we pit nick fury who played a role in this film against rick flagg who is the lead member of the suicide squad right rick flag is played by joel kinneman and david ayers suicide squad film and also the upcoming jam’s gun the suicide squad they’re both like badass soldier types with important legacies and leadership roles i think it’ll be a fun match so tune in to that next week until then we want to remind everyone to please subscribe to our show if you haven’t already please leave a rating or review on your platform of choice and of course sharing the show on social media or in person is also a big help for us but that does it for this episode we want to give a big thanks to our executive producers ken johnson jace krump john starovsky john spees zachary hepburn and john bechinina for helping make this podcast possible and we’ll talk to you guys next week up up and away true believers