Summer is here, as is our first sequel of the summer in Iron Man 2 and the results are an entertaining and solid follow up to the widely lauded original, but I can’t quite put my finger on how it stacks up to its predecessor.

The conundrum I have with the film is the tone and focus this film takes.  Now there isn’t a lot of plot like before, there are a few new characters to digest, and briefly glimpsed ones get even more screen time.  But the film actually handles it’s “more” well in that we get a good grasp of who everyone is and what their motivations are rather efficiently; but it doesn’t flow the greatest as it jumps in and out everyone’s stories.  The film is still the Tony Stark show first and foremost but it jumps away on a couple occasions for just a tad too long from our favorite iron suited alter ego.  In fact, this film is barely an Iron Man movie and more of a Tony Stark tale; which I actually think is a good thing.  The Iron Man action scenes are great and its best moments are better than the original’s set pieces, but there are really only two or three scenes of Iron Man doing his thing.  The film is more focused on Stark and his issues of being a hero and a crisis he is having as part of his role as a superhero.  Now again, I think this is great, but I wasn’t really prepared for it going in and was caught a bit off guard and think I need to see it again to really settle on a final opinion, especially when comparing it to the first film.

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