[minor spoilers throughout]

It took me a second viewing to ‘get’ the original Iron Man film, having seen it at cinemas it just left me numb, a forgettable summer superhero movie devoid on any real meat on it’s bones, it was breezy, colourful, charismatic but sorely lacked any of the turmoil or dramatic chops to really cement itself in your mind. Or maybe we’ve all just been spoiled by Nolan’s Batman movies? Anyhow on second viewing I took it for what it was, and I enjoyed it lot more, so much in fact I’ve been eager to catch the sequel since release, confident I’m prepared for it this time.

Well, I left the theatre with the same numbness and minor boredom I felt after seeing the original. In a nutshell it’s fell into the same pitfalls that made Spiderman 3 so messy, in that it’s added too much and ends up a hodgepodge of underdeveloped subplots and characters, suffocating the best characters into minor roles in favour of fan-service plugs. In this case the greedy walking Avengers advert that is Sam L Jackson’s Nick Fury and Scarlett Johanson’s Black Widow. Both of whom show up unexpectedly half-way through like an unwelcome Graham Norton advert during a Doctor Who episode [that ones for you Bob], derailing a film just finding it’s feet.

They should have kept it simple – Sam Rockwell’s sleezey arms dealer looks to cash-in on Tony Stark’s reluctance to donate his Iron Man suit to the military so recruits vengeful, tatooed, Russian scientist Rourke to develop his own suit. Meanwhile Starke battles to find an alternative energy source for the Iron Man suit that is slowly killing him. Instead Favreux is like an over-excited obese man at a buffet giddily ingesting ideas as the mid-section just keeps getting more and more bloated. The biggest casualties of which are Mickey Rourke, who is introduced as a real savage rival to Starke in the films stand out scene only to be forgotten about until the end. Where he shows up wearing the identical suit to Bridges in the original, and is duely dispatched with ease, in what is a dull anticlimax of an ending. And, of course, the eternally underrated Sam Rockwell (who doesn’t even appear on the poster, but has more screen-time than Cheedle, Rourke or Johanson).

Iron Man 2 still struggles by thanks to its vivacious performances, the odd good line and a hell of a lot of effects but it clouds the successful formula of the first and feels hollow as a result, unable to match the expectations set for it.