While the screenplay by Justin Theroux (!) and the execution by returning director Jon Favreau are underwhelming, I don’t hate the movie or its ambition. Sequels are supposed to expand the world, deepen the themes, and broaden the cast of characters from the original. Iron Man 2 certainly does that, but the way it crams all of it into a two-hour timeframe is clumsy and haphazard.

The story picks up after the dust of Iron Man 1 has settled into a new normal: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has become a celebrity and a one-man vigilante army with a not-so-secret identity. He faces public backlash against his actions as a superhero, and he’s under pressure from the government to hand over the Iron Man technology. Meanwhile, the long shadow of Stark Industries’ warmongering is catching up with Tony.

Iron Man 2 introduces three villains, each of whom is independently interesting but together make the movie feel unfocused. The first, Stark’s seductive and duplicitous secretary Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), ends up being a red herring as an elite SHIELD agent who we would come to know as Black Widow. Recently, there’s been a backlash to her character in this movie, including by Johansson herself, as people note the horny male gaze from which she is written and objectified. This is not an incorrect observation, but the entire point of her character as introduced here is to be a femme fatale who lures Stark to the dark side away from Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), so it at least serves a narrative purpose.

The second and third villains get mashed together into a single plot thread that doesn’t really make any sense. First, we have Stark’s rival defense contractor Justin Hammer played by Sam Rockwell, who gives a delightful and eccentric performance as a snotty billionaire. Then we have Ivan Vanko aka Whiplash (Mickey Rourke), who is seeking vengeance against the Stark family and wields some slick metal-slicing electric whips.

Each of these antagonists challenges Stark in a different way. Hammer explores the idea that Stark’s Iron Man technology will inevitably be used for war and for profit, even if Stark maintains his ideals. Romanoff escalates Stark’s easygoing playboy habits into his potential downfall. (Since Black Widow is a hero, this is eventually justified as being a moral test of Stark’s character as he’s evaluated for the Avengers.) Whiplash adds a layer of generational Cold War guilt, making Stark question how much he must pay for the sins of his father and recreate his mistakes.

The fact that these antagonists all poke at Stark’s flaws in different ways makes me receptive to the film’s idea of fitting them all into a single film. But the truth is that it ends up too messy and none of the villains get their proper due. This lack of focus is exacerbated by additional narrative cruft, like Potts getting promoted to CEO of Stark Industries, that don’t really go anywhere. It sometimes feels like Iron Man 2 is all subplots with no main plot or a bunch of TV episodes haphazardly combined.

One particular bit of lazy writing that bothered me is that Whiplash represents the antithesis of Iron Man, his metal-shredding powers able to undo Iron Man’s advantage. However, in the final action scene, Whiplash inhabits an Iron Man suit, leading to another showdown of Iron Man battling dark mirror versions of himself. This is essentially the climax of Iron Man 1 all over again, just with more dark Iron Men this time.

Iron Man 2 also forces me to reckon with an oversimplified statement I made in my Iron Man 1 and Incredible Hulk reviews: that the real villains of those movies are the military-industrial complex. This is a reflection of public distrust of these institutions from the late Bush era in which the movies were created. However, neither of those movies, especially not Iron Man 1, makes a case for total de-escalation and pacificism, but instead proposes the idea of putting the weapons in the hands of a few self-proclaimed heroes (*cough* Obama) to administer justice as their morals see fit. Iron Man 2 spends some of its runtime deconstructing this theme by having the bad guys and mercenaries (who are ultimately one and the same) expose the hypocrisy of Iron Man 1’s conclusion: Giving an “enlightened few” all the weapons and power is functionally equivalent and inevitably just as dangerous as giving it to legions of faceless contractors working for profit. Modern warfare is a vicious, capitalistic cycle no matter what face we put on it. Had Iron Man 2 really pushed this idea to its endpoint, I would have been thrilled and surprised: It would’ve been a compelling and dark theme for Marvel to investigate.

But then the ending pulls a complete U-turn. The finale doubles down on the ending of Iron Man 1, giving all the power back to Stark to be the one-man international justice system — detective, judge, jury, executioner — this time with James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle, recast from Terrence Howard) at his side.

Iron Man 2 is flawed but it also has plenty working in its favor, and that includes pretty much the entire cast. Certainly, after The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 feels full of punchy and well-articulated performances. Downey Jr. leads the pack, maintaining the energy of his performance in the first film, but also darkening it at the right moments, providing his character with cohesion even when the writing is inconsistent.

The supporting cast of Iron Man 2 is strong, too. Rockwell is legitimately funny and seems to perfectly understand the assignment and tone. Johansson is beautiful and charismatic as Romanoff, and has great chemistry with Downey, Jr. She also gives the franchise some much-needed female agency in spite of the weird male gaze she’s depicted with. No surprise to me she became a cornerstone for the MCU. Rourke is perfectly menacing as Ivan Vanko, even though I wish he had more to do as Whiplash. He also has some meta-film mirrors to Robert Downey Jr., as both had been seen as Hollywood redemption stories in the late 2000’s. Cheadle is a big step up from Howard, no surprise, holding his own against Downey, Jr. Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson reappear, and they’re reliable, too, though the movie can’t quite decide exactly what Potts’ personality is. Honestly, the broad cast of Iron Man 2 is the core reason why the movie is so enjoyable, and it saves the film a rating point or two.

The film’s action is noisier and more Michael Bay-esque than either Iron Man 1 or The Incredible Hulk. There are two big action sequences. The first, when Whiplash disrupts a car race that Stark is participating in, is pretty great, making use of Whiplash’s specific threat and with some unique set piece construction. The second, the big finale with a bunch of robots flying around and punching and/or blasting each other, is pretty bland. I’m honestly already running out of things to say about these action set pieces.

Iron Man 2 is tough to give an overarching rating to. It has a lot of good stuff within, and is always watchable thanks especially to its charismatic cast and its intriguing world-expansions. Sum it up and it’s a fun film. But that’s not the whole picture; the film’s story is not fully functional, and it drags Iron Man 2 down quite a bit into not-quite-recommended status. Up next is the series’ first adventure to the cosmos with Thor.

As the second entry in the increasingly sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel is lucky that The Incredible Hulk, not to be confused with Ang Lee’s Hulk from five years earlier, didn’t sink the franchise before it ever really got going. It’s not an all-time stinker, but it’s dull and angst-ridden where Iron Man was energetic and fun.

Whatever failures the movie makes, it’s not a problem with the underlying character or story. The Incredible Hulk is a much more fascinating and dramatically rich character than the large majority of other superheroes. A billionaire making a mecha suit is nifty fun, but a man who becomes a monster he can’t control if he ever expresses strong emotions promises a much more compelling slice of human drama, especially as the narrative thrust becomes whether or not he can cure himself of the disease that robs him of the basic human experience of “feelings.” It’s almost harder not to find metaphor in the premise than it is to take it at face value.

The film gives us a quick flashback montage to show us Hulk’s origin. Bruce Banner, played by Edward Norton, is a scientist searching for an experimental cure for radiation disease in a program that’s actually a cover for a “super soldier” operation led by General “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt). Banner inadvertently mutates his blood with the “gamma radiation” he’s trying to cure (or something like that… the opening exposition is a bit rushed and confusing). The outcome of this is that he turns into a hulking green monster whenever his heart rate goes too high. As the Hulk, Banner becomes an unstoppable killing machine.

Unfortunately for The Incredible Hulk, the movie’s problems are already piling up just from the elements introduced in the first few minutes. The first is that Norton delivers a limp, sulky performance in the lead. He obviously suffers in comparison to Robert Downey Jr.’s sparkling performance in Iron Man — and when Downey Jr. appears for 30 seconds in the film’s credit sequence, it’s an immediate reminder of what charisma looks like. But even in a vacuum, Norton is disappointing, with none of the soulfulness or broken heart that Banner requires to be compelling. Banner would be recast before his next appearance, and it was the right choice.

Nearly as problematic as Norton’s performance is the film’s dependence on mediocre CGI. Hulk is supposed to be a fearsome force of nature and raw power. But he has such a boring, generic design and an uncanny execution that he’s never even slightly intimidating or imposing. The only moments where Hulk is even a little scary are before we actually see him for the first time when he’s just a creature in the dust and shadows during his first transformation in the story.

The film picks up after the introductory montage in Rio de Janeiro where Banner has hidden himself to both cut himself off from his past life, where he’d be a danger to those he loves, and to hide himself from the US government who wants to harness his Hulk power for their super soldier program. I’ll point out here that The Incredible Hulk makes Marvel two for two in which the stories’ real villain is the greedy military-industrial complex.

Before long the military tracks Banner down right at the same time that he gets in a fight with a local bully. Thus, we get our first underwhelming Hulk action scene. I do like the build-up to it, though. As mentioned, it includes some spooky build-up to the reveal of Hulk, and takes place at a soda bottling factory, which is a fun setting for an action scene with lots of smashing.

Banner finds himself on the lam again, and this time he tracks down the lover he abandoned, Betty Ross (Liv Tyler), who just so happens to be the daughter of the “Thunderbolt” Ross who is hunting for Banner. Tyler is an incredible actress and one of the shining spots of my favorite movie of all time, That Thing You Do. But she is undeniably a bit flat here. She doesn’t have any sparks with Norton, which is kind of the whole point of her character. There are rumors her character may reappear in a future Marvel story, but for now, Tyler remains one of those high-profile actors it’s easy to forget appeared in just one MCU movie.

As all this has been going on, Banner has been secretly communicating with another scientist, with the codename of Mr. Blue (Tim Blake Nelson). With the lengths that the movie goes to build up the reveal of Mr. Blue’s identity, you would think it would be someone interesting. Instead, he’s the cheesiest stock version of a slightly loony egghead you can imagine. And you know that he is coded to be smart because he uses big thesaurus words where they don’t quite fit. He’s truly a horrible piece of writing.

One interesting idea the movie plays with in the second half is some King Kong “’twas beauty killed the beast” vibes. Banner and Betty run off to the woods, and she tries soothe him out of Hulk mode. I really wish Tyler had played up the idea that she was turned on by Hulk in monster mode, because it really would fit in there, and a little perversion would have been fun in such a dreary film.

The main villain is played by Tim Roth, a power-thirsty soldier who gladly injects himself with Hulk powers extracted from Banner’s blood by Mr. Blue. Thus, we have the second consecutive Marvel movie ending with a noisy, climactic action scene where our hero faces off with a mirror version of himself. It’s already starting to feel like a cliché, and we’re only two movies into the MCU.

What really makes The Incredible Hulk disappointing isn’t anything conceptual or big picture. It’s all in the details and execution. Director Louis Leterrier gives everything a muddy, dark-tinted, low-energy look. The quips are really dumb and poorly delivered — one of the first lines of the film is Norton saying “you won’t like me when I’m hungry.” Groan. That’s the level we’re dealing with here.

The low lighting in particular is problematic. The design of the Hulk is desaturated and almost gray-skinned, and the majority of the action scenes take place in illegible darkness. This is one problem that would linger throughout the MCU’s duration, though it’s as much a reflection of trends in modern action filmmaking as a deliberate creative choice.

So, The Incredible Hulk is a bit of a low-charm sophomore slump for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It goes without saying they’d eventually bounce back, but I would have been pessimistic circa 2009. For round 3, they’d turn back to Iron Man, Jon Favreau, and Robert Downey Jr.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, the highest-grossing franchise in film history, an unprecedented piece of movie storytelling for both better and worse, began in 2008 with Iron Man. I was in college, so it occupies that strange temporal place in my brain of events that occurred in my adulthood and are easily-recalled memories, but also took place so long ago that the world from which it sprang seems unrecognizable today. I often think of the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States shortly after my 20th birthday as the first cultural or historical event that I properly experienced as an adult, but you could just as well pick the premiere of Iron Man.

Of course, no one knew what the Marvel Cinematic Universe would become when this movie debuted. So in some ways, it wasn’t a noteworthy event at all. It was just another solidly crafted and entertaining superhero blockbuster back when the genre still felt pretty fresh. Sure, it has a post-credits scene and a few references to a larger superhero galaxy, but they feel mostly like playful winks in context.

I should confess here that, as of the writing of this review, I have only seen 9 of 32 MCU movies. The last one I watched was Captain America: Civil War on an airplane. The last one I saw in theaters was Avengers: Age of Ultron eight years ago. So, I am a little bit outdated on exactly what constitutes an “MCU film.” Thus, I will try not to overgeneralize and prescribe too much until I’ve seen more of it.

Nonetheless, it’s striking to me that Iron Man at once feels quite a bit like what the series formula (as I understand it to be) would become, and also a bit different. I don’t quite dare call any of it edgy, but it doesn’t feel quite so boardroom sanitized as later films in the franchise. After all, the very first scene in the movie, and therefore of the entire MCU, is a terrorist bombing in Afghanistan. One of the film’s main theses is that the military-industrial complex is inherently unethical. That’s more of a stand than I can imagine Disney taking in 2023.

We follow Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), a playboy billionaire genius running his late dad’s defense contractor company. After an introductory flashback, he is captured by terrorists called the Ten Rings, an obvious stand-in for Al-Qaeda, while promoting the effectiveness of one of his million-dollar “Jericho” bombs. The Ten Rings imprison him and force him to make a duplicate of his bomb for their own dangerous pursuits. Also, another imprisoned scientist, Ho Yinsen (Shaun Toub), saves Stark’s life post-bombing by surgically implanting an electromagnet into his heart.

This early segment of the film is its weakest because it relies so much on wonky plotting. For example, the Ten Rings are perhaps the dumbest captors in history because they don’t notice that Stark builds himself a mecha suit instead of a missile. You’d think this would be obvious. There’s even a shot where one of the terrorist bosses looks at Stark’s blueprints and doesn’t really question it. Another eye roller comes after Stark uses his proto-Iron Man suit to blast his way out of the terrorist cell, and just so happens to get noticed by rescuers the moment he is about to perish from heat and dehydration. Deus ex helicopter.

Luckily, the second half of the film works quite well, and even that first half is pretty sleekly-executed by director Jon Favreau, such that you won’t mind waving away the plot hiccups.

The rest of the movie, post-Afghanistan rescue, centers on Stark butting heads with two foils: First, his military best bud James “Rhodey” Rhodes, played here by Terrence Howard. Howard gives the only outright dud performance in the cast, never really conveying any distinct personality or charisma, so I think Marvel was smart to aggressively re-cast Rhodes as Don Cheadle in future films.

The other apparent rival of Stark’s is his mentor, Stark Industries second-in-command, and dad’s best friend, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges). Following Stark’s life-threatening ordeal in Afghanistan, he gains a conscience and decides Stark Industries will no longer sell weapons. This, alas, is a major threat to the company’s big profits. Here is where I question the film’s reputation for rah-rah American patriotism; it’s pretty critical of the country’s ever-growing defense budget.

The film half-heartedly teases out some suspense for whether the ultimate betrayer of Stark will be Rhodes or Stane, who both seem deeply skeptical of Stark’s change-of-heart. Meanwhile, Stark replaces his electromagnet heart with a phlebotinum gizmo called an “arc reactor,” which is sufficient to power his newly-developed Iron Man suit, the one we’d come to know and love.

It doesn’t take all that long to become obvious that the film’s villain will be profit-hungry Stane, leading to a showdown where he inhabits his own Iron Man knockoff suit called Iron Monger, which is exactly the right amount of on-the-nose for a villain’s name given the film’s theme and tone.

The climactic action scene is a noisy, clanging Transformers-style set piece, but one that’s honestly legible and pretty exciting. It also doesn’t drag on too long; the film totals 126-minute runtime, which feels downright merciful.

In particular, the action scenes in this film are very high on fist-pump factor. There are a lot of cool moments of adrenaline rush — whether it’s Iron Man walking away from an explosion like a cool guy, emerging from smoky rubble with his iconic eye glow, or jetting around through sky like Toothless the dragon.

I was deeply skeptical of whether Iron Man would hold up, but I had a smile on my face for most of the duration. It’s ultimately a generic action blockbuster, but a solid and well-assembled one.

By far the biggest of the film’s strength comes in its casting. In particular, Robert Downey, Jr. is a home run as Tony Stark. He is very funny and scene-stealingly charismatic. He perfects the brash but lovable billionaire persona, injecting the character with immediate personality and wit, making every time he’s on screen (most of the movie) a delight. Apparently, much of the dialogue was improvised or rewritten during filming by Downey, Jr., Bridges, and Favreau — it definitely feels like Downey, Jr. helped craft the character in his image. Also much was made at release time that the film was a comeback for Downey, Jr., who was a notorious partier much like Stark.

Downey Jr. also hits the dramatic points in darker moments with the right touch: The conscience he develops over the course of the runtime is not exactly Oscar-level drama but it’s surprisingly effective and always believable, giving Iron Man an emotional backbone.

Most of the rest of the cast is solid, too. Bridges is another highlight, giving some intensity to the villain Iron Monger while still passing as the kind of guy who would be a beloved father figure. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the film’s love interest, Stark’s humble secretary Pepper Potts, who is supposed to be a contrast to the supermodels Stark dates. The problem is that Paltrow doesn’t have a frumpy bone in her body, and so she’s not particularly believable as a hidden beauty requiring Stark to look deeper, which is how she is written. But Downey, Jr. and Paltrow have very good chemistry, so it never bothered me too much.

It is easy to imagine an alternate version of the past 15 years of blockbuster movie history where Iron Man flopped, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe exploded on the launchpad. In fact, we won’t have to wait long to see an entry in the series with similar building blocks but a fraction of the overall charm. Iron Man didn’t build a multibillion-dollar cinematic juggernaut on its own, but it laid the foundational cornerstone and remains an excellent action-packed blockbuster with good polish, energy, and a world-class central casting choice in Robert Downey, Jr.