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fangasmic2010-05-03 01:18 pm
stopitsomemore) wrote in fangasmic2010-05-03 01:18 pm
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[recap] Iron Man 2 (Part 1 of 2) (Because This Movie Is Long As Balls.)
Sometimes, having friends in low places is good enough to get to you into a screener of Iron Man 2 a week before the U.S. release. The fact that I practically had to knife other friends in the face in order to get that slot means nothing. Nothing more than I am dedicated. This is part 1 of 2 of our recap. Fair warning, it's very, very detailed and chock full of spoilers. Plus, it's also not terribly polished; I didn't want to force my fellow FG writers into spoiling themselves for the film.
The credits open with a voiceover while there's enough ambient sound (probably Paramount Pictures' cocks whipping through the air) to make it hard to discern what's being said — and then you realize it's the audio from the closing moments of the first film: Tony Stark, unable to resist, owning his identity as Iron Man in front of a roomful of reporters.
It makes the first actual scene of the film a cold shock: proletariat stark grays and bleak shadows, naked bulbs, and b-roll from Tony kicking his way out of the Iron Man closet with Russian screen graphics. Pulling away from the grainy television, we see an old man, coughing and looking near death, saying, "That should have been you, Ivan," while Ivan — played intriguingly by Mickey Rourke — leans broodingly in a doorway holding a brown paper bag containing what is probably vodka. Since that is the only thing that people ever drink in Russia, or do in Russia, or relate to when it comes to Russia. I'm not saying this is wrong, or inaccurate, or even an unfair assessment, I am just saying that it's Ivan clutching vodka in a closed doorway, sulking like his dad — and it's obviously his dad — dying is interrupting his going to Burning Man.
When he goes over to his father, the man predictably gasps his last breaths, and Ivan stares heavenward and screams in probably the second stupidest part of the movie. Thankfully, there were only three really stupid parts of the movie, and the clip at which Jon Favreau directs makes it actually impossible to linger or prune in any of them for longer than a few frames.
Out of Russia and into the guts of a airplane six months later, we hear a computerized voice saying that everything is ready to go, and then, in a straight-away, the jagged, jarring guitar of AC/DC starts rocking the fuck out, and boom, there it is.
There's no time wasted, just the magenta and gold suggestion of a suit before it goes soaring off over a soft-lit cityscape underneath, all flares at the soles of his feet and on his palms, doing barrel rolls and who the fuck like a self-directed comet while Shoot to Thrill blows shit up left and right. This is also helpful for sorting out which of your fellow theatergoers are fucking awesome, because they will probably be headbanging to this shit as Tony Stark makes like an asteroid in the airspace above Flushing, New York, where apparently — like some sort of one-corporation World's Fair — Stark Enterprises years ago built an enormous pavilion for year-long expos where scientists and inventors and capitalists can bring to stage their creations.
The irony of this movie coming out on the heels of shitshows like Milken and masturbatory speaking engagements like TED and the holy pantheon of shooting in everybody's face, Steve Jobs' keynote is lost on no one, Favreau.
(Something to keep in mind: if you don't like AC/DC, you are sort of shit out of luck. The entire movie's soundtrack -- apart from the odd melancholy instrumental -- is basically AC/DC, beyond which, I can think of no other band that better captures the zeitgeist of the film.)
Anyway, Tony Stark pulls in closer and closer earthbound, at which point we are introduced to the high kicks and choreography of the Stark Industries dancers, which my friend has been referring to the Iron Manettes. I sincerely hope that is not what they're actually called. "Dressed" in outfits the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders would be envious of, they're entertaining a mobbing crowd better suited for, well, an AC/DC concert than a scientific exposition when Tony lands with his trademark metallic thump to flares and sparks shooting allure the place.
In a bit of particularly badass graphics work, the floor underneath Tony opens up, and in an upgrade from Jarvis's first, hamfisted attempts to undo the clasps of Tony's Iron Man suit-bra, mechanized arms come up and the suit folds itself up and away like titanium origami as the crowd goes wild. Little by little, a single-breasted pinstripe tux is revealed, and Tony, wearing fascial hair of dubious trustworthiness is revealed with an utterly ravishing shit-eating smile.
It's one of many — but definitely one of the most defining — moments that reminds you like a sharp and heavily ringed backhand that Robert Downey Jr. is not only perfect for the part, he's probably the only person who could ever pull off the marriage of manic intensity and attention deficit man-child that is Tony Stark. He stands on stage, he works the microphone, he talks about how since the advent of Iron Man, the world's entered into a period of uncontested peace.
He talks about how in truth, Stark Expo isn't about him, or Stark Industries, even, it's about the future, and how for the next year, Stark Expo will host the most groundbreaking inventors and entrepreneurs, and directs our attention to a circa 1950s video featuring his father. For those who care, that would be Howard Stark, played fantastically by John Slattery, who apparently is now going to be pigeonholed as a hotass from the 1950s. In case that name isn't immediately familiar to you (SHAME ON YOU), Slattery is also and better known as hot bastard in charge, Roger Sterling from AMC's Mad Men.
Meanwhile, backstage, Tony Stark is pressing his finger against a tiny metal box, and after a click, a green digital box tells him his blood toxicity is at 15%.
The readout on the box, like a lot of other things, looks very early digital, nearly analog, like a lot of other things in this film in contrast to our heavily digitized world. Tony's Iron Man suit, necessarily, is a physical thing, clattering and loud and complicated for all its improvements and how sleakly it fits him. Jarvis, Tony's digital butler and constant recipient of his verbal abuse and possible refugee from one of the many thousands of shuttered Detroit auto manufacturers, is a physical thing, that clicks its components and tilts the mechanized arm of its body, spins its literal gears. Later in the movie, when Tony is at his most delightfully intense, there's a visual sight gag of pipes and gears stacked up on top of heaps of books, a motorcycle, criss-crossing the expanse of his basement workspace. Probably because of its fundamental nature, Iron Man 2 doesn't fall into the obvious trap of everybody watching a movie screen where on a movie screen everybody is watching another screen, thank God.
And then, Happy — who I don't remember from the first film at all, but is completely delightful as Tony's engagingly douchey body man slash chauffeur — appears to whisk Tony through a veritable gauntlet of hopeful starfuckers, titty shots, kids with photos they want signed, and celebrities. In case you're keeping track, around this time is when Iron Man's two cameo's happen: Stan Lee mocking up as Larry King (hilarious) and Olivia Munn's brief appearance as a reporter. Why did any of that happen? Nobody knows. This scene, interestingly, is filmed first-person from Tony's point of view, and is the only piece of the movie like this: it's a little jarring, but absolutely perfect for conveying the chaos.
Pushing through the crowd, Tony's presented with a hot chick leaning against a hot car ("Latest model," Happy tells him; "Girl come with the car?" Tony asks; "I hope so.") and slides in, jittery, probably still coming down off the high of both the suit, the crowd, and the adulation.
The woman, who's clearly game for flirting, turns out to be there to serve Tony with a subpeona to appear before a Congressional Committee.
"How far is Washington D.C. from here?" Tony asks Happy.
"Two hundred and fifty miles?" Happy says, and then Tony drops a lead foot on the gas pedal and they speed away.
In D.C., they're met by a room packed to the gills with press, politicians, fans of Iron Man, and Pepper, glowering from one of the benches who is totally not laughing at any of Tony's jokes. He has a lot of those. And keeps turning around to check that she's laughing when he makes them. She isn't. And then she tells him to turn the fuck around to face the panel, which -- fans of Larry Sanders take heart -- is being chaired by Gary Shandling playing a living oil slick in Senator Stern. (He's also put on some weight. Don't worry guys, it doesn't agree or disagree with him; it's just effusively there. I am sure it will not keep David Duchovny from just...really wanting to have sex with him.)
The U.S. government would like Tony to turn over his suit, being an issue of national safety and also, it's so not fair that Tony gets to play with it and like, nobody else does, you know? That's like, so un-American. To prove their point, they haul out Justin Hammer, CEO of rival defense technology manufacturer HammerTech.
(Get it? Hammer? The blunt force of? Screenwriter Justin Theroux is subtle as fuck sometimes, I know.)
Here is what you guys need to know about Justin Hammer: he is fucking hilarious.
Hammer is indistinguishably Southern, a sort of float-in-and-out mash-up of Mason-Dixon accents that parlays well with the look: he's slender, wears well-tailored three-piece suits, has a minor case of bouffant hair and wears Buddy Holly glasses and probably snaps his gum at dinners where they serve you an amuse bouche, leave you five forks, and the butler serves you from the sideboard. At one point, you get a look at his palms, and they are dark orange with self-tanner. It's an exquisite little touch.
(He is also played by Sam Rockwell. Although IMDB tells me that Rockwell has been working steadily as an actor since 1989, I don't remember him in a single other project, despite the fact that he played Zaphod Beeblebrox in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I have always said that if I was going to let one alien probe me (over, and over, and over, and over and over and over again) it would be Zaphod BeebleBrox. Anyway, the point is, he's fantastic.)
Hammer's there to talk about the potential threat of such powerful technology like the Iron Man suit being in private hands. Also there as a soft target for Tony to toss of a half-dozen deliciously cruel one-liners right off the bat.
Senator Stern also calls in Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, who's introduced with a back shot and specifically named by Tony, probably because after being played by Terrence Howard in the first Iron Man movie, he's being played (very well, by the way) by Don Cheadle this time. The panel has Rhodey — who fights it the entire time, pointing out that taking something out of context is an inappropriate way to co-opt his research — read from a report he submitted saying that the Iron Man suit could potentially be harmful to the U.S. Tony seems utterly unconcerned, which, props movie, because creating artificial divides between protagonists and their friends who your audience are cheering for is the number one way to irritate the fuck out of an intelligent viewer.
Stern, unsatisfied with just the verbal theatrics, busts out some video of other countries experimenting to get the Iron Man technology. Tony decides at this point to bust out a little piece of handheld sweetassery that made me hot under the collar — like a tiny, touch-screen Jarvis or something — that co-opts the graphics on the screen, takes over the monitor feed, supplants it with Stark Enterprises proprietary feed, which in more detail shows scientists from places like Iran and North Korea blowing themselves the fuck up and — oh, awk — also shows scientists from HammerTech blowing their asses the fuck up, while Hammer on the side shouts clarifications like, "That test pilot lived, by the way."
Ultimately, Tony's having none of it, and living strongly by principles espoused by the likes of Ron Paul, Ayn Rand, and Ludacris, and points out that the suit is his, he made it, nobody can make him share, and everybody should back the fuck off, and he leaves the hearing room to a standing ovation.
Totally unrealistic, and yet, it's pretty badass — I'm not going to lie.
Somewhere in the middle there, back in Up Your Frozen Fucking Ass, Russia, Ivan, driven mad by grief, busts out the blueprints of something that looks remarkably like Tony's arc reactor, only at the bottom of said blueprints, the names read: ANTON VANKO and HOWARD STARK. Oops. Anyway, he works feverishly in a subterranean seeming-room with shitty lighting and a lot of concrete, doing Science things with a lot of Concentration and Intent. Try not to pay too much attention to the walls upon walls of newspaper clippings from such illustrious publications like Forbes and Fortune and the New York Post and the Observer, because if you start to think overmuch about how this guy (remember: in Up Your Frozen Fucking Ass, Russia) acquired the original newsprints of these, all in their American newsstand versions, too, your head will hurt. Anyway, it's pretty obvious he's making something that's totally Srs Bzns.
And zipping over to California, up the PCH to Tony's sprawling abode in Malibu, Tony's finding his blood toxicity continuing to rise, and has to change the Paladium in his arc reactor. They're burning out faster and faster, and, Jarvis notes, the thing keeping him alive is also killing him, and Tony shuts him up pretty quick when he spies Pepper barreling right at him, shouting about how Stark is in total disarray, and how despite the stock being up logarithmically, the actual management of the company is a hot fucking mess. Also, Tony has donated her entire modern art collection — Pepper thinks it's hers because she's spent years curating it; Tony disagrees because he bought it — to the Boy Scouts of America.
(Also, great throwaway sight gag here about a Shepard Fairey IRON MAN print that Tony puts up instead of some hideous but probably expensive piece of modern art. Sorry, Pepper, I'm on Tony's side on this one.)
Stark needs a leader! And Tony won't be that person, Pepper is telling him, at which point, Tony admits she's right, orders up some champagne, and anoints her the new CEO of Stark Enterprises. (If you're wondering,stopitsomemore, was this one of the three stupid things you were talking about in the film? The answer is: God yes.) Aside from all the actual complications of public corporation succession planning and the fact that he would have to get board approval for that shit and blah blah blah realitycakes, it is a sweet moment, with Tony handing the reigns over to Pepper because he genuinely thinks she'll probably do a much better job than him. Probably, she will, too.
We get a brief cut of frozen Russia again, where a fairly downmarket Eastern European twink (Bel-Ami, is that you?) delivers unto Ivan Vanko travel papers. Also: Mickey Rourke is really fantastic in this movie; the character isn't much, but he isn't nothing, and whenever he has scenery, he chews the fuck out of it.
Back at Stark, Tony and Happy are in the boxing ring when Pepper, newly crowned CEO, comes in with a notary from legal to get the paperwork in order. That notary from legal is Natalie Rushman, a furiously, furiously hot redheaded Scarlett Johansson that made me sort of swoon in the theater, and Tony wants her, bad. Pepper says no.
When they roll up into Monaco, where there is some sort of rich person playground Formula 1 car race or something, it is apparent from the fact that Natalie is there that Tony ignored her. It's hard out there for a hot lady CEO, and not the least because Justin Hammer is there, too, and harassing everybody who will agree to stand within two yards of him. Also, the bullshit blond Vanity Fair reporter is back. It just gets harder when Pepper sits down at the Stark Enterprises table and finds out that Tony has decided to peace the fuck out of the corporate events and go drive his racer himself — which coincides with us seeing Ivan again, decked out like pit crew...only evil.
Part 2 coming tomorrow! For today, my wrist is going numb!
The credits open with a voiceover while there's enough ambient sound (probably Paramount Pictures' cocks whipping through the air) to make it hard to discern what's being said — and then you realize it's the audio from the closing moments of the first film: Tony Stark, unable to resist, owning his identity as Iron Man in front of a roomful of reporters.
It makes the first actual scene of the film a cold shock: proletariat stark grays and bleak shadows, naked bulbs, and b-roll from Tony kicking his way out of the Iron Man closet with Russian screen graphics. Pulling away from the grainy television, we see an old man, coughing and looking near death, saying, "That should have been you, Ivan," while Ivan — played intriguingly by Mickey Rourke — leans broodingly in a doorway holding a brown paper bag containing what is probably vodka. Since that is the only thing that people ever drink in Russia, or do in Russia, or relate to when it comes to Russia. I'm not saying this is wrong, or inaccurate, or even an unfair assessment, I am just saying that it's Ivan clutching vodka in a closed doorway, sulking like his dad — and it's obviously his dad — dying is interrupting his going to Burning Man.
When he goes over to his father, the man predictably gasps his last breaths, and Ivan stares heavenward and screams in probably the second stupidest part of the movie. Thankfully, there were only three really stupid parts of the movie, and the clip at which Jon Favreau directs makes it actually impossible to linger or prune in any of them for longer than a few frames.
Out of Russia and into the guts of a airplane six months later, we hear a computerized voice saying that everything is ready to go, and then, in a straight-away, the jagged, jarring guitar of AC/DC starts rocking the fuck out, and boom, there it is.
There's no time wasted, just the magenta and gold suggestion of a suit before it goes soaring off over a soft-lit cityscape underneath, all flares at the soles of his feet and on his palms, doing barrel rolls and who the fuck like a self-directed comet while Shoot to Thrill blows shit up left and right. This is also helpful for sorting out which of your fellow theatergoers are fucking awesome, because they will probably be headbanging to this shit as Tony Stark makes like an asteroid in the airspace above Flushing, New York, where apparently — like some sort of one-corporation World's Fair — Stark Enterprises years ago built an enormous pavilion for year-long expos where scientists and inventors and capitalists can bring to stage their creations.
The irony of this movie coming out on the heels of shitshows like Milken and masturbatory speaking engagements like TED and the holy pantheon of shooting in everybody's face, Steve Jobs' keynote is lost on no one, Favreau.
(Something to keep in mind: if you don't like AC/DC, you are sort of shit out of luck. The entire movie's soundtrack -- apart from the odd melancholy instrumental -- is basically AC/DC, beyond which, I can think of no other band that better captures the zeitgeist of the film.)
Anyway, Tony Stark pulls in closer and closer earthbound, at which point we are introduced to the high kicks and choreography of the Stark Industries dancers, which my friend has been referring to the Iron Manettes. I sincerely hope that is not what they're actually called. "Dressed" in outfits the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders would be envious of, they're entertaining a mobbing crowd better suited for, well, an AC/DC concert than a scientific exposition when Tony lands with his trademark metallic thump to flares and sparks shooting allure the place.
In a bit of particularly badass graphics work, the floor underneath Tony opens up, and in an upgrade from Jarvis's first, hamfisted attempts to undo the clasps of Tony's Iron Man suit-bra, mechanized arms come up and the suit folds itself up and away like titanium origami as the crowd goes wild. Little by little, a single-breasted pinstripe tux is revealed, and Tony, wearing fascial hair of dubious trustworthiness is revealed with an utterly ravishing shit-eating smile.
It's one of many — but definitely one of the most defining — moments that reminds you like a sharp and heavily ringed backhand that Robert Downey Jr. is not only perfect for the part, he's probably the only person who could ever pull off the marriage of manic intensity and attention deficit man-child that is Tony Stark. He stands on stage, he works the microphone, he talks about how since the advent of Iron Man, the world's entered into a period of uncontested peace.
He talks about how in truth, Stark Expo isn't about him, or Stark Industries, even, it's about the future, and how for the next year, Stark Expo will host the most groundbreaking inventors and entrepreneurs, and directs our attention to a circa 1950s video featuring his father. For those who care, that would be Howard Stark, played fantastically by John Slattery, who apparently is now going to be pigeonholed as a hotass from the 1950s. In case that name isn't immediately familiar to you (SHAME ON YOU), Slattery is also and better known as hot bastard in charge, Roger Sterling from AMC's Mad Men.
Meanwhile, backstage, Tony Stark is pressing his finger against a tiny metal box, and after a click, a green digital box tells him his blood toxicity is at 15%.
The readout on the box, like a lot of other things, looks very early digital, nearly analog, like a lot of other things in this film in contrast to our heavily digitized world. Tony's Iron Man suit, necessarily, is a physical thing, clattering and loud and complicated for all its improvements and how sleakly it fits him. Jarvis, Tony's digital butler and constant recipient of his verbal abuse and possible refugee from one of the many thousands of shuttered Detroit auto manufacturers, is a physical thing, that clicks its components and tilts the mechanized arm of its body, spins its literal gears. Later in the movie, when Tony is at his most delightfully intense, there's a visual sight gag of pipes and gears stacked up on top of heaps of books, a motorcycle, criss-crossing the expanse of his basement workspace. Probably because of its fundamental nature, Iron Man 2 doesn't fall into the obvious trap of everybody watching a movie screen where on a movie screen everybody is watching another screen, thank God.
And then, Happy — who I don't remember from the first film at all, but is completely delightful as Tony's engagingly douchey body man slash chauffeur — appears to whisk Tony through a veritable gauntlet of hopeful starfuckers, titty shots, kids with photos they want signed, and celebrities. In case you're keeping track, around this time is when Iron Man's two cameo's happen: Stan Lee mocking up as Larry King (hilarious) and Olivia Munn's brief appearance as a reporter. Why did any of that happen? Nobody knows. This scene, interestingly, is filmed first-person from Tony's point of view, and is the only piece of the movie like this: it's a little jarring, but absolutely perfect for conveying the chaos.
Pushing through the crowd, Tony's presented with a hot chick leaning against a hot car ("Latest model," Happy tells him; "Girl come with the car?" Tony asks; "I hope so.") and slides in, jittery, probably still coming down off the high of both the suit, the crowd, and the adulation.
The woman, who's clearly game for flirting, turns out to be there to serve Tony with a subpeona to appear before a Congressional Committee.
"How far is Washington D.C. from here?" Tony asks Happy.
"Two hundred and fifty miles?" Happy says, and then Tony drops a lead foot on the gas pedal and they speed away.
In D.C., they're met by a room packed to the gills with press, politicians, fans of Iron Man, and Pepper, glowering from one of the benches who is totally not laughing at any of Tony's jokes. He has a lot of those. And keeps turning around to check that she's laughing when he makes them. She isn't. And then she tells him to turn the fuck around to face the panel, which -- fans of Larry Sanders take heart -- is being chaired by Gary Shandling playing a living oil slick in Senator Stern. (He's also put on some weight. Don't worry guys, it doesn't agree or disagree with him; it's just effusively there. I am sure it will not keep David Duchovny from just...really wanting to have sex with him.)
The U.S. government would like Tony to turn over his suit, being an issue of national safety and also, it's so not fair that Tony gets to play with it and like, nobody else does, you know? That's like, so un-American. To prove their point, they haul out Justin Hammer, CEO of rival defense technology manufacturer HammerTech.
(Get it? Hammer? The blunt force of? Screenwriter Justin Theroux is subtle as fuck sometimes, I know.)
Here is what you guys need to know about Justin Hammer: he is fucking hilarious.
Hammer is indistinguishably Southern, a sort of float-in-and-out mash-up of Mason-Dixon accents that parlays well with the look: he's slender, wears well-tailored three-piece suits, has a minor case of bouffant hair and wears Buddy Holly glasses and probably snaps his gum at dinners where they serve you an amuse bouche, leave you five forks, and the butler serves you from the sideboard. At one point, you get a look at his palms, and they are dark orange with self-tanner. It's an exquisite little touch.
(He is also played by Sam Rockwell. Although IMDB tells me that Rockwell has been working steadily as an actor since 1989, I don't remember him in a single other project, despite the fact that he played Zaphod Beeblebrox in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I have always said that if I was going to let one alien probe me (over, and over, and over, and over and over and over again) it would be Zaphod BeebleBrox. Anyway, the point is, he's fantastic.)
Hammer's there to talk about the potential threat of such powerful technology like the Iron Man suit being in private hands. Also there as a soft target for Tony to toss of a half-dozen deliciously cruel one-liners right off the bat.
Senator Stern also calls in Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, who's introduced with a back shot and specifically named by Tony, probably because after being played by Terrence Howard in the first Iron Man movie, he's being played (very well, by the way) by Don Cheadle this time. The panel has Rhodey — who fights it the entire time, pointing out that taking something out of context is an inappropriate way to co-opt his research — read from a report he submitted saying that the Iron Man suit could potentially be harmful to the U.S. Tony seems utterly unconcerned, which, props movie, because creating artificial divides between protagonists and their friends who your audience are cheering for is the number one way to irritate the fuck out of an intelligent viewer.
Stern, unsatisfied with just the verbal theatrics, busts out some video of other countries experimenting to get the Iron Man technology. Tony decides at this point to bust out a little piece of handheld sweetassery that made me hot under the collar — like a tiny, touch-screen Jarvis or something — that co-opts the graphics on the screen, takes over the monitor feed, supplants it with Stark Enterprises proprietary feed, which in more detail shows scientists from places like Iran and North Korea blowing themselves the fuck up and — oh, awk — also shows scientists from HammerTech blowing their asses the fuck up, while Hammer on the side shouts clarifications like, "That test pilot lived, by the way."
Ultimately, Tony's having none of it, and living strongly by principles espoused by the likes of Ron Paul, Ayn Rand, and Ludacris, and points out that the suit is his, he made it, nobody can make him share, and everybody should back the fuck off, and he leaves the hearing room to a standing ovation.
Totally unrealistic, and yet, it's pretty badass — I'm not going to lie.
Somewhere in the middle there, back in Up Your Frozen Fucking Ass, Russia, Ivan, driven mad by grief, busts out the blueprints of something that looks remarkably like Tony's arc reactor, only at the bottom of said blueprints, the names read: ANTON VANKO and HOWARD STARK. Oops. Anyway, he works feverishly in a subterranean seeming-room with shitty lighting and a lot of concrete, doing Science things with a lot of Concentration and Intent. Try not to pay too much attention to the walls upon walls of newspaper clippings from such illustrious publications like Forbes and Fortune and the New York Post and the Observer, because if you start to think overmuch about how this guy (remember: in Up Your Frozen Fucking Ass, Russia) acquired the original newsprints of these, all in their American newsstand versions, too, your head will hurt. Anyway, it's pretty obvious he's making something that's totally Srs Bzns.
And zipping over to California, up the PCH to Tony's sprawling abode in Malibu, Tony's finding his blood toxicity continuing to rise, and has to change the Paladium in his arc reactor. They're burning out faster and faster, and, Jarvis notes, the thing keeping him alive is also killing him, and Tony shuts him up pretty quick when he spies Pepper barreling right at him, shouting about how Stark is in total disarray, and how despite the stock being up logarithmically, the actual management of the company is a hot fucking mess. Also, Tony has donated her entire modern art collection — Pepper thinks it's hers because she's spent years curating it; Tony disagrees because he bought it — to the Boy Scouts of America.
(Also, great throwaway sight gag here about a Shepard Fairey IRON MAN print that Tony puts up instead of some hideous but probably expensive piece of modern art. Sorry, Pepper, I'm on Tony's side on this one.)
Stark needs a leader! And Tony won't be that person, Pepper is telling him, at which point, Tony admits she's right, orders up some champagne, and anoints her the new CEO of Stark Enterprises. (If you're wondering,
stopitsomemore, was this one of the three stupid things you were talking about in the film? The answer is: God yes.) Aside from all the actual complications of public corporation succession planning and the fact that he would have to get board approval for that shit and blah blah blah realitycakes, it is a sweet moment, with Tony handing the reigns over to Pepper because he genuinely thinks she'll probably do a much better job than him. Probably, she will, too.We get a brief cut of frozen Russia again, where a fairly downmarket Eastern European twink (Bel-Ami, is that you?) delivers unto Ivan Vanko travel papers. Also: Mickey Rourke is really fantastic in this movie; the character isn't much, but he isn't nothing, and whenever he has scenery, he chews the fuck out of it.
Back at Stark, Tony and Happy are in the boxing ring when Pepper, newly crowned CEO, comes in with a notary from legal to get the paperwork in order. That notary from legal is Natalie Rushman, a furiously, furiously hot redheaded Scarlett Johansson that made me sort of swoon in the theater, and Tony wants her, bad. Pepper says no.
When they roll up into Monaco, where there is some sort of rich person playground Formula 1 car race or something, it is apparent from the fact that Natalie is there that Tony ignored her. It's hard out there for a hot lady CEO, and not the least because Justin Hammer is there, too, and harassing everybody who will agree to stand within two yards of him. Also, the bullshit blond Vanity Fair reporter is back. It just gets harder when Pepper sits down at the Stark Enterprises table and finds out that Tony has decided to peace the fuck out of the corporate events and go drive his racer himself — which coincides with us seeing Ivan again, decked out like pit crew...only evil.
Part 2 coming tomorrow! For today, my wrist is going numb!