We have supped full with wonders. After swarms of human mutations and alien life-forms, borne along on a tide of fireballs, what can cinema still surprise us with? Well, believe me, until you’ve heard Mickey Rourke speaking Russian, you really don’t know what special effects are. In “Iron Man 2” he plays Ivan Vanko, a metal-fanged Muscovite physicist who, taking his cue from Hamlet, plans to avenge his father’s death by destroying Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), lately revealed as Iron Man, whose own father, Ivan thinks, was the cause of his father’s demise. If that sounds nebulous, it is. I like the “Iron Man” franchise, but even the most fervid fan would have to concede that motivations are not its strongest suit. That honor goes to the armored, rocket-boosted, Ferrari-red outfit that Tony dons whenever he wants to zip across the firmament or impress girls. The fact that it’s forged from heavy metal is the only possible excuse for the AC/DC numbers that have been dumped all over the soundtrack.
In contrast to Bruce Wayne, who appears to have learned his public-relations technique from Thomas Pynchon, Tony relates to his public all too well. We see him at the opening of the Stark Expo, in Flushing Meadows, a year-long celebration of Tony and all his works; at a televised Senate committee hearing, where, ever modest, he says that he has “successfully privatized world peace”; and at a raucous soirée, whe
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