Movie Review: Iron Man 2

I have seen Iron Man 2. WHERE TO START?

• OH HAI IDENTITY PERFORMED THROUGH MEDIA. DID YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU? Yeah, I love that a good chunk--maybe the first third?--of the movie was us watching the characters through the lens of another camera. That made me so happy in my academic bits, y'all, you have NO IDEA. *dreamy sigh* (One might wonder why so many fen are academics, but I wonder whether so many of us are academics because we started as fen.)
• PEPPER POTTS. BLACK WIDOW. THAT VANITY FAIR REPORTER. The women of this movie are so deliciously awesome, and we wouldn't even have to talk about Tony Stark much. I'm pretty sure. Well. Okay, yeah, this is not a Bechdel movie. BUT THE WOMEN ARE AWESOME.
• This movie has mixed feelings about America. Wait, no--this movie has mixed feelings about the choices of the American media, but it certainly doesn't argue that American media isn't ostentatious. Ostentation takes two forms: Tony Stark's performative vulgarity, and Hammer's (and by extension, the military's) performative vulgarity. Both are excessive and kind of gross, but one is supposed to make us laugh, and the other one is supposed to make us pump our fists to America, F*ck Yeah! And we're supposed to feel vaguely uncomfortable about both. This movie was about consumption, conspicuously.
• I missed California a lot in some of those scenes. A LOT.
• SHIELD! I love mythos and worldbuilding, y'all. This isn't even my side of the Marvel universe, but it all weaves together, and it makes me happy.
• I missed Terence Howard. Don Cheadle is amazing, but I don't know. Maybe they wrote Rhodes inconsistently, as well! (Though he was awesome in that last scene of his, I felt.) ETA: Apparently Terence Howard is not a good person! I had no idea, y'all. When I said I missed him, I meant that recasting (when not meta-winked at, Fresh Prince-style) makes me uncomfortable, that is all! /eta
• RDJ is delicious. Just wonderfully over-the-top.
• I liked Vanko. He had no motivation aside from screw you, Tony Stark and I WANT MY BIRD, but I liked him despite that. Well, maybe because of that. Go fig.
• I salute anyone who can build machines that make new elements by hand. WTF, TONY STARK? I did not know you were MAGICAL, as well as smart!
• Hey, did that little film of Howard Stark remind anyone of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm? Because it kind of felt like that Disney-esque World's Fair technology thing. (As opposed to Stark Expo, which was just ludicrous, for real. A year-long weapons fair? WHATEVER.)
• How HILARIOUS was it when cherry blossoms started falling before Iron Man and War Machine had their standoff with the drones? I started laughing out loud, for serious. That was AMAZING.
• Yeah, I don't see Pepper/Tony going anywhere, but they're definitely fun. (I am sad the movie didn't have the "You complete me!" bit from, like, ALL the trailers, though. BOO.)
• THOR. I clearly need to pick up a few TPBs before that all happens.