This movie starts with that Stark at a New Year's Eve party in 1999, years before he became the hero we know him as today. Accompanying Tony at this gathering is his date Dr Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) and his loyal bodyguard Happy (the first two IRON MAN movie's director Jon Favreau). Sneaking aboard their already crowded elevator is the slightly unsightly Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce, unrecognizable at first). He wants to offer Tony a chance to be part of his new company AIM and Tony plays a mean prank on him as a way of saying 'beat it'.
(SN: Interestingly enough I remember meeting Aldrich, Maya and Maya's invention, Extremis, during a period of time when I still read comic books on a regular basis but not in the capacity of how this movie portrays them.)
Flash foward to the Iron Man Stark. How is Tony (Robert Downey Jr) these days anyway after the events of last summer? He doesn't appear to be too scarred by them but it's revealed early that he isn't the same. Of course he just met a god, a monster, a living legend from decades ago, not to mention an entire alien army. So nobody can blame him if he's not quite the same fun loving billionaire after all that. That entire experience haunts him. He starts to have panic attacks anytime somebody brings up the New York incident. So what does he do? He does what he does best: he works. He's become another type of Iron Man, one who just keeps going and going. He reveals he has barely slept since the event, dragging himself out of bed to work on, what else, improving his Iron Man techonology. In earlier scenes it appears his robotic assistant Jarvis (voiced by Paul Bettany) has more personality than the former fun loving Stark.
The one thing that he has going for him is the love of his best friend Pepper Potts (the always lovely Gweneth Paltrow). She has a meeting with a now handsome Killian (Pearce, now looking like Pearce) and she too rebuffs his offer, albeit not as cruelly as Stark. Meanwhile, Stark's friend Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), still in possession of the War Machine outfit, now called Iron Patriot (Marvel Comics fans would remember that name too), is on the hunt per the POTUS for a terrorist called the Mandarian (Ben Kingsley, who should be arrested for stealing every scene he's in), the mastermind behind a series of bombings that is confusing the hell out of everybody because no bomb casings are recovered from the scenes of the crimes.
This sets in motion a chain of events that will leave.... No since spoiling anything right?
You're just here to see if this movie works, right? It totally works! And the 3D for once doesn't take anything away from the great story telling. If I have any complaints, it's that IM# starts kinda slow but once it takes its foot off the brakes, you're in for one hell of a ride. Wanna talk about this movie with me? Find me on Twitter as @MrGBIZ or catch me on Bunch.com.
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