Iron Man 2 partially redeemed by Marvel’s What If...? Die Hard spoof
Forget the debate over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie because it obviously is and there are more pressing matters: Like, is What If…?’s Die Hard-spoofing Christmas episode actually a better Iron Man 2 than Iron Man 2?
I admit to recency bias. What If…? season 2 kicked off earlier this month, and the episode in question — which finds Darcy from the Thor movies and Happy Hogan organizing a holiday party at Avengers Tower — only just dropped on Christmas Eve. But with 13 years of distance from Iron Man 2, I’m ready to make bold MCU claims beyond “it bad.” Director Jon Favreau got some things right in his sloppy 2010 sequel, and in a 30-minute ode to Die Hard, What If…? reminds us of one win: Sam Rockwell was a perfect Justin Hammer. We just didn’t get much of him at the time.
Iron Man 2 (which based on many reports was written on the fly by Favreau, star Robert Downey Jr., and Tropic Thunder’s Justin Theroux) is a mess. The film flits with Tony’s Demon in a Bottle arc, tries and fails to make a character out of Mickey Rourke’s grunting, cockatoo-cuddling Whiplash, hastily promotes Rhodey to War Machine and Nick Fury to a true Avengers wrangler, introduces Natasha Romanoff in the most grating way imaginable, and gives Elon Musk a cameo that looks worse and worse as the days go by. Pretty bad movie!
But Favreau also cast Sam Rockwell as weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer. In an alternate universe, he was the centerpiece villain, the slimeball alternative to Tony Stark who could keep up with the one-liners. In Iron Man 2 he’s a plot device to get Iron Man fighting armored drones. But speaking of alternate universes, What If…? has come to his rescue.
What If…? season 2’s third episode imagines what could have happened
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