Iron Man 2 (2010)

rating: ****

the story: Tony Stark's afterglow from the big Iron Man reveal is threatened by a business rival.

review.  I hate Iron Man.  I hate the movie responsible for the whole MCU.  I think that if everyone who flocked to see Avengers: Endgame this year actually bothered to rewatch (or surely in some cases, watch) it, they'd hate it, too.  But we have this fiction that the MCU has done no wrong.  Forget that everyone forgets Incredible Hulk is the second MCU movie, or even exists within the MCU, and you get an origin to the whole thing that makes it all the more remarkable that the MCU happened at all.  What saved Iron Man was the fortuitous casting and performance of Robert Downey Jr., and Iron Man 2.

Now, conventional wisdom is that it's actually Iron Man 2 that sucks.  Which is nonsense.  Iron Man 2 is the reason the MCU happened.  And it's the reason why anyone thinks the MCU has been so good.  It's the real template.  And it did it better than just about all of the subsequent movies.

Tony Stark is given a real arc.  A real arc.  This is the only movie, in all his appearances, where he is given a real arc.  And a satisfying one, at that.  He seems like a real character.  The charm of the performance matches, for the first time, the charm of the character.  And built all around it is an incredible assembly, the first great assemblage of characters in the MCU.  This is Scarlett Johansson's first appearance as Black Widow.  Arguably it's her best appearance as Black Widow.  Samuel L. Jackson has his first decent-sized appearance as Nick Fury.  Don Cheadle assumes the role of Jim Rhodes.  Garry Shandling is a smarmy senator trying to match wits with Tony Stark.  Gwyneth Paltrow does more of her Pepper Potts (which is basically the same in every appearance).  Director Jon Favreau, in his second and final film at the helm in the MCU, puts in another appearance as Happy Hogan (inexplicably his most enduring contribution to the whole thing).  Mickey Rourke throws away his Hollywood comebackto play Whiplash, with a wicked Russian accent.  Clark Gregg puts in an Agent Coulson appearance.  And...ladies and gentlemen: Sam Rockwell.

Sam Rockwell's whole career is unfathomable.  How does he keep finding roles?  You'd think after The Green Mile he would've been dismissed into an endless stream of tiny creep roles.  But he just keeps finding decent roles, decent-sized roles.  And you can thank appearances like his Justin Hammer for it.  He utterly lampoons the Tony Stark of Iron Man in this one.  He lampoons the Tony Stark of Iron Man 2 in this one.  And somehow we never see the dude again.  Absolutely indispensable magic.  But at least they realized instantly how important Loki was (the best thing about Thor by far).

So the whole package is pretty wonderful.  And quite possibly still the best single thing about the whole MCU.