Iron Man 2 soars - Just not quite as high as the first.

The original Iron Man came out of left field (not to mention successfully reviving Robert Downey Jr.'s career single handedly) to be one of the best films of the 2008 summer season.  A great story, wonderful cast, excellent villain, and tremendous pacing all came together for a roller coaster thrill ride to start the 2008 summer season right.  Has the sequel followed the likes of X2, Spider-Man 2, and The Dark Knight to turn out even better than the original?  Not quite.  But don't think that the movie is the next Spider-Man 3 or Superman 3 because it certainly isn't.  Jon Favreau has returned to the director's chair to put together the next exciting chapter in Tony Stark's life, and has continued to build on Marvel Comic's greater ambitions for the eventual Avenger's movie (which is probably going to have the longest list of Hollywood superstars ever put into the opening credits of a film.)


SMALL SPOILER ALERT


Let's get the pros out of the way before taking a look at the cons shall we?  Jon Favreau has an impeccable cast and gives just about every single one of them plenty of screen time to display the characteristics and traits that they each bring to the table.  There couldn't be a better choice for Tony Stark than Robert Downey Jr., constantly riffing on others around him, a bit of a womanizer, excellent comedic timing, and great when the drama calls for it, he simply is Stark.  A man who walks a fine line that balances playboy lifestyle, responsible businessman, peace bringing superhero, and an individual who is struggling to come to terms with the legacies left behind by his equally brilliant father.  Don Cheadle takes up the role of Lt. Col. James Rhodes after Terrence Howard was unceremoniously removed from the cast after the original.  I've always liked Terrence Howard and don't really know why he was booted from the project but Cheadle is a great replacement and does seem to fit the part a little better.  Mickey Rourke commands just about every scene that he's in as the vengeful Ivan Vanko, a known method actor you'd have to look pretty hard to somehow find evidence that he isn't a russian ex-con who's spent a lot of years doing some hard time.  Sam Rockwell is a welcome new element in the mix of Tony Stark's world and plays the part of a scheming rival really, really well.  He's sleazy, slick, smart, well spoken, and an entrepreneur looking to fill a void.  He's fun to watch on screen from top to bottom, I think he's an underrated actor who has done some really great work.  Samuel Jackson and Clark Gregg return as agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and, thankfully, each of them get a little more screen time than the original.  Jackson is hysterical as a man trying to get a narcissistic superhero under control.  Gwyneth Paltrow returns as the able-bodied assistant Pepper Potts, lovely as ever and her rapport with Downey Jr. is as strong here as the original.  Lastly on scene is Scarlett Johansson in a role that, while fun, isn't quite given the screen time it feels like it should have been.  Not at all like the tacked on Venom in Spider-Man 3 who was an add that Sam Raimi didn't want to put in the movie, she fits just fine, and is worked into the plot but just feels under utilized which is a shame.  Hopefully we see more of her in the IM3.


The plot is strong for the most part, and picks up fairly quickly after the events of the first movie.  Stark is dealing with issues on a lot of angles from confronting the American Military industrial machine, to ghosts of his father's past business practices, the fallout of revealing to the world that he is Iron Man, and dealing with the realities of the fact that, at the end of the day, he's just one man in a suit, his abilities and health are all impacted or supported accordingly.  I think one thing that both the original and now the sequel do well is make one think about the realities of weaponry in our world today.  War as a business continues to be a running theme and, even though Stark is out of the business, it shows that there will always be others looking to take up the mantle and continue to evolve it.  That's a scary prospect, and not necessarily a fictitious one.  One of the best elements of the first movie was the humor, Tony Stark constantly cracking jokes at inappropriate times and things like that, and thankfully Favreau and his screenwriters have expanded on that in nearly every area of the film.  There's a lot of laughs to be had and almost none of them feel forced.  A particular sequence in the middle of the film might get a bit hokey, but it's easily looked over for all the other successful humor.  The action sequences are fast paced and intense.  It's obvious that Favreau is getting more and more comfortable with big sequences that involve a lot of elements and characters.  While being chaotic and busy, I still feel the sequences were easy to follow from an audience standpoint.  While the good guys and bad guys look somewhat similar in the movie, it's easy to tell who's who and what's going on at all times (unlike some other movies of late...ahem....Transformers 2....)


After saying all this you're wondering where I find fault with the movie and why I wouldn't say it's quite as good as the original.  Here's why.  I don't feel that the villains found here are quite as villainous as Jeff Bridges' Obadiah Stane in the original.  They're bad guys, no doubt, but I don't feel that either of them get to really explore how bad they might actually be.  Maybe we'll see them in a future film?  I'm sure at least one of them will be around for a few more sequels.  I also felt the story was a little unfocused, or maybe too big in scope?  There was a lot going on with a lot of individuals working towards different goals and, consequently, it felt that some ideas were a little half-baked.  It's a shame because all of the threads are pretty compelling, so to see some of them get shorted is kind of sad.  Without getting into spoilers I think those are my major qualms.


One final note is that I absolutely loved the casting of Garry Shandling as a smarmy US Senator.  I've never been a fan of his, but this bit of casting was inspired brilliance.  He was fantastic in the few scenes that he was in.


Be sure you sit through the credits for the final scene at the end.  It's a brief one, but important as Marvel continues to build towards The Avenger's movie.

Nightmare on Elm Street - Nearly bored to death.

What's most amazing about the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot that just released is how utterly and completely boring it is.  With such great source material, and such an iconic villain in the form of Freddy Krueger, it boggles the mind how the director and screenwriters managed to cobble together a horror film that has absolutely no tension whatsoever.

I enjoyed Jackie Earle Haley in Watchmen and thought he was a good choice to cast as the new Freddy, and he's pretty good in the movie, he just doesn't have much to work with unfortunately.  The rest of the cast seems comprised of kids who didn't make the Twilight call backs and, thus, had some free time in their schedules to work on a watered down, WB knock off version, of an 80's classic horror flick.


I had vaguely high hopes about this flick, as the original was a kind of seminal moment in my early movie watching career (I have a vivid memory of watching the original sitting on the floor at the foot of my parent's bed one sunny afternoon and being scared out of my mind.)  Like the recent Alice in Wonderland, it seems as though the team behind the project decided to cherry pick some of the most memorable moments of the original story (however not the Johnny Depp blood geyser for some reason??) as way of paying homage, but then they decided to cut those moments down to about 15 seconds of screen time (again with no tension) and quickly move right past them.  For the rest of the film's "scary" beats they opt for lame jump out and get you moments that you can see coming from a mile off, or badly edited quick cuts to supposedly "frightening" imagery that...well....isn't.


There's honestly not much more to say.  The first is a far superior film in just about every way.  It's scarier, the plot is better, and Robert Englund is given more time to terrorize.  It's weird because, there is a moment or two right near the end of the film where you can tell that Jackie Earl Haley's Freddy has real potential to be a world-class creep.  The final climactic beats where he's facing off with the new Nancy are, in fact, creepy mainly because this version more directly addresses Krueger's backstory as a pedophile.  However, just as he's getting warmed up the credits roll (after a quick cut to black on a lame final beat.)  It was in these few final moments that I found myself thinking, "Wow, if we'd seen this side of him the whole movie this really could have been something." and instead they went for cheap scares and watered down imagery to frighten you.


Stay home and rent the original.  Now, on to another point I want to discuss briefly....


You know what sucks?  Knowing that this reboot is the most recent in a long, long line of reboots that's just begun with scads more coming down the pike.  This line includes such titles as the recent Wolfman, Clash of the Titans, The Crazies, and the upcoming American Pie, Spider Man, Robin Hood, The Thing (okay it's a "prequel"), Arthur, Fright Night, Red Dawn, I Spit on Your Grave and, (yes Andrew) Footloose.



I understand the idea behind all of the "rebooting", Hollywood figures it's better to bet on a known quantity that's been successful in the past to get people into theatres rather than betting on new properties that are unfamiliar to audiences and, therefore, less likely guaranteed to draw a crowd.  Hollywood has been hit hard by the recession like just about everyone else out there, so the math makes sense.


What pisses me off about this trend, especially what we've seen of the product so far, is that the studios don't seem to give a damn about the material they're rebooting (I will admit that Star Trek was a great reboot....)  To me that's insulting, and a slap in the face to moviegoers.  I'd like to believe that if you're going to try to retell a story that's already been told once successfully, that you'd want to try to not only service the original, but do it one better, add to it in some new and insightful way.  Instead the idea of all of these remakes seem to be focused on telling a rough outline of the original story and filling the rest of the screen time with lame special effects and overblown action sequences that add nothing at all to the story being told.


It's a nasty game to be playing on us moviegoers and I hope that some of the upcoming reboots buck the trend that's been established or the movie going horizon is going to be bleak for the foreseeable future, and that sucks for all of us.  Here's hoping.