Iron Man 2 and Scarlett Johansson were awesome - review

Scarlett Johansson 

Iron Man 2 and Scarlett Johansson were awesome! This blogger has no idea what critics were thinking who elected to pan Iron Man 2, but no where has their been a larger disconnect of thought since Tiger Woods crafted his goody image while simultaneously screwing every cocktail waitress in his orbit.

Iron Man 2 opened at The Grand Lake Theater at midnight, bringing in Friday with a repulsor-ray brightness that rivals today's sun.

What was so great about Iron Man 2 was it gave more form and face to its characters and added new ones but did a better job of forming them for the audience.

I don't know what movie SF Chronicle / Heart Corporation's Amy Biancolli was watching when she wrote...

"Iron Man 2" is a better-than-average follow-up, but Tony doesn't suit up enough. He almost never flies it...

What?

That is just plain massively wrong. Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) used and flew in his Iron Man suit in the opening scene, in the well-done Monte Carlo battle with Mickey Rourke, in his house battling with Lt. Cmd. James Roady (who used the older Mark II version of the suit, and in the final battle scene sequence. All of those scene sequences had Tony Stark activating the rocket jets in his boots, either for short bursts or long flights.

Her criticism seemed to mirror other critics, and made me wonder if there was some kind of PR-driven "kill effort" underway. How can so many people be so wrong about one movie? How can their evaluation be so out of touch with what people say? Something's wrong here.

But there's nothing wrong with the movie. The audience at The Grand Lake Theater laughed, applauded, and cheered a number of times. In fairness, the crowd was a mix of fanboys (like me), older adults, and a lot of college students taking a break from finals. They hissed Sam Rockwell and swooned over Scarlett Johansson.

(And a special mention for Garry Shandling, who played the combative "Senator Stern" in a role that is more than memorable because he dropped an F-bomb on Tony Stark.)

It's that last demographic group that Iron Man 2 and the entire comic book-to-screen movement have been fueled by. They're the reason for the proliferation of successful super hero video games and for the record-breaking crowds of 39,000 people at 2010 Wonder Con San Francisco, and the total sellout of Comic Con months before its July date in San Diego. To write a review of a movie from anything less than their point of view is to miss what this is all about.

Scarlett Johansson plays "Black Widow" and provides an intoxicating mix of sex and violence. One of the people I interviewed after the movie said she "if you're listening. Scarlett Johansson, my God!"

Scarlett Johansson was the hit of Iron Man 2. That's taking nothing away from Robert Downey, Jr. or Gwyneth Paltrow or Don Cheadle or Mickey Rourke, who were all good and Downey, Jr., who was even better than in the first Iron Man, but Johansson just killed it. Period.

Marvel Entetainment has captured a Zeitgeist created by not just by its iconic characters and their already solid place in our culture, but incredible improvements in movie special effects and the mainstreaming of tech news and geek culture, all aided by the emergence of New Media. Marvel's captures a wave and knows how to ride it, as evidenced by the neat way references to upcoming movies Captain America and Thor are weaved into Iron Man 2.

Stay tuned.  Iron Man 2 was a fun ride.  Look for more from Marvel.