Iron Man 2 is about product. A considerable amount of the film's jeopardy revolves around dictating trends and the attempted poach of brand identity. Drama moves on trade show presentations, screamed at docile audiences. In Iron Man 2, Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark is the USP. He's configured his own hyper-armour and won't let anyone else play with it. Off-screen he's vapourised terror-cells and halted uprisings, instituting a privatised US centric world peace; Stark's non-profit, tax write-off is an enforced global stability not sanctioned by any recognised international authority. No-one can compete with Stark. He is alone. Director Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 muddles around with the madness of this super-idea, hitting on a fracturing hero and an army of bitter imitators. Stark's industrialised peace doesn't make these people happy, it makes them envious.
In this sequel Stark must battle Mickey Rourke's Soviet era reflection and Sam Rockwell's tan-hand impressionist, both figures corrupt recalculations of Stark's good fortune. They amount to minor distractions in the end though, Iron Man 2's biggest enemy is Tony Stark himself, specifically his tendency to self-destruct. At a minimum, Stark's incredible new power is physically poisoning him. Lacking any appropriate equal to confide in, Stark retreats to microfilm of his father. Sensing his end, Stark goes about driving away those close to him, secretly equipping them to continue his strange, motorised ideals. Iron Man 2 is messy, frequently resembling a tangle of vaguely connected improv duels. Equally though, it is frequently about a bored and stupored superman. Stark's is a personality founded on drives, struggling for a challenge. If this world is conquered, then what is next? A post-credits clip hints at a cosmic stage for the eventual Avengers tie-in. There's that product again.
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