Marvel Month - Mini Review: Iron Man 2

Well, Iron Man 1 was a success, so a sequel was inevitable. Iron Man 2 came out in 2010 to critical acclaim at the time, however looking back on it people’s tastes seem to have soured towards it. Still it made $623m on a $200m budget so it was successful enough for Marvel as they continued to build momentum towards the Avengers. Here’s how I see it

Marvel Month - Mini Review: Iron Man

So, it’s been a while since I did a theme month in November, but here’s one

It’s Marvel Month

So, for this month I’ll be covering all the Marvel movies in the MCU that I haven’t already covered. Iron Man 3, Age of Ultron and Civil War have already been done, so I’m not doing them again. I also won’t be doing Spider-man Homecoming since that’s still a Sony product, just in the MCU (plus I don’t have any space for it) Logan and Deadpool I’ll try and cover sometime next year. Also, because since most Marvel movies haven’t been critically slammed and I don’t dislike them personally, this will be entirely mini reviews.

So, with that said, let’s get to where it all started with Iron Man.

2008 was when Marvel struck it lucky with the beginning of their cinematic universe, with a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes it remains one of their most critically acclaimed movies but not their most successful, it made $585m on a $140m budget, which was a good enough starting brick for the towering behemoth the Marvel Cinematic Universe would come to be. Does it hold up nearly 10 years later? Let’s take a look. And spoilers for a 9-year old movie will follow

Guilty Pleasures #6 Iron Man 3

The Iron Man franchise was the beginning of great things for Marvel as their partnership with Paramount allowed the creation of a Marvel Cinematic Universe, which eventually cumulated into the Avengers.

But Iron Man sequels themselves never quite had the popularity of the first. Iron Man 2 was criticised for particularly its lack of Iron Man himself and its ending, where Tony created an impossible to synthesise element in a matter of minutes. Still it enjoys a 73% rotten tomatoes rating and made a decent $600 million at the box office, so a 3^rd instalment was inevitable.

Also note-worthy is that this is the last movie distributed by Paramount Studios. Following Marvel Comics Acquisition by Disney, Disney themselves handled the distribution of the films that followed this.

There are loud critics for Iron Man, despite its incredible box office performance, managing $1.2 billion at the box office, and its favourable 78% rotten tomatoes. I don’t consider this movie that brilliant, it’s flawed and I’ll be spending the remainder of the review explaining it. But for all its problems, I find, like most Marvel movies, it’s fun and enjoyable. So let’s dig into Iron Man 3 and discover all that it can be.