Iron Man 2

Most of the time, no wait, ALL of the time a sequel is just an excuse for Hollywood to cash in on the success of a great film. They're usually not bad, but sometimes a sequel can ruin a good thing. Yet sometimes, on rare occasions they get it right. There are those rare sequels that don't try to top or outdo the last one, don't sacrifice character development or story for explosions, and don't try to be bigger for the sake of being bigger. Examples of this are The Dark Knight, Halloween 2 (1981), Aliens, The Godfather Part 2, Spiderman 2, Lethal Weapon 2, Terminator 2, and now Iron Man 2 can stand alongside these great films as one of the greatest sequels ever made. So now let me explain why. At the end of Iron Man, Tony Stark confessed to the world that he is Iron Man and the movie picks up right where we were left off. The government claims that the Iron Man suit is an extremely dangerous WMD and needs to be turned over to the military. Of course Tony Stark is unwilling to hand it over saying the is suit is not a weapon and that he "is" Iron Man and that there is no threat to anyone. Stark also mentions that no one is close to being able to imitate the technology used to build anything that can compete with his suit. Little did he know that waiting in the works was Ivan Vanko who blames the Stark family for his fathers misfortunes and wants to destroy the Stark legacy. He is just as smart as Tony and he wants blood. While Tony is once again doing on of his billionaire playboy stunts by taking over his companies stock car in a race Ivan comes onto the track and shows the world that there is someone out there who can take Iron Man. After seeing this Tony Stark's business rival Justin Hammer played by the ever talented Sam Rockwell breaks Ivan out of jail and enlists him to help embarrass Stark even further. There is a lot of other conflict in the story that I wont give away here, but let me explain why I mentioned earlier that I think this is one of the greatest sequels ever. The best example I can think of to make my point is the second Transformers movie. Transformers was a fun and interesting modern take on a classic cartoon, but the sequel forgot that with all the explosions it was supposed to tell a story as well, so instead we got a movie so bad that all the robot action was pointless and the whole thing was just stupid. Whereas the filmmakers for Iron Man 2 realized that the reason why people love the first one so much wasn't because of the action, but because of the story it told, and the great characters that came along with it, and instead of making a bigger movie, they made a movie that reminded us why we fell in love with Tony Stark and the gang in the first place. The characters in Iron Man 2 all have their own growth that they have to go through and we learn more about them in the process. So instead of giving the audience more eye candy and over the top action, we get everything we loved about Iron Man in the first place. Everything that made the first one great is present in the sequel without overshadowing the first one so much so that you cant revisit it. I think that's what makes a good sequel, and just like when they introduced us to Iron Man, they got it right.

4 out of 5

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one luv, Toinne