This being my first movie review here, I thought I would go with one that came out, well, yesterday.  This review will be some of my random thoughts about the movie, the characters, how the movie moves from point to point and also discussing some of the important parts of the movie that will affect how Marvel movies of the future will play out or how I think they will play out(this part will be written to help out people who don't know about Marvel as much as some people).  The review will be very unorganized so bear with me through it.  Anyway, onto the review.
 
One of the most interesting parts of the movie, to me, is the very beginning with how we see Mickey Rourke's character, Ivan Vanko create his Whiplast outfit in much the same way that we saw Tony Stark create Iron Man in the first movie.  I was very pleased with the beginning and I must say that Tony is, once again, a fireball of dialogue.  Robert Downey Jr. is once again perfect and the movie would not work nearly as well if he was not Tony Stark.  I am very glad he was chosen because he continues to prove why he is one of the best actors of today.  He did a great job of handling some of the more dramatic parts when he was dealing with dying from poisoning by the palladium he is using to keep himself alive.  I did not know about this and I really enjoyed how Robert used that as a means to have some nice dramatic moments in the movie.
 
Once we moved into the middle of the movie, we really got to see some cool things.  The fight with Whiplash in Monaco was excellent and really well done, as was the talk that Robert and Sam Rockwell had was a true highlight.  I have not seen many films with Sam Rockwell in them but he did an excellent job so I may check out some of his other movies.  Anyway, his Justin Hammer was a great counterpoint to Tony Stark in that he acted like the younger brother who is constantly compared to his older brother and is always found lacking.  He did a great job of not being too over the top but when he did go over the top, he was truly awesome.  Many of the characters that were introduced or fleshed out in this movie were well done and this film did not fall into the Spider-Man 3 and X-3 trap of trying to have too much in the movie.
 
As we moved toward the end of the movie, I really liked how they used Tony's dad as such an essential part of the movie.  I was really excited about hearing how his dad was a founder of SHIELD and how that will factor into the Marvel movies to come but more on that later.  I loved how when he was figuring out what his dad was trying to tell him, he learned something about himself and also that his dad was not who he thought he was.  I will definitely look forward to more of Howard Stark in the future.  The final scene with the introduction of War Machine was excellent and the final battle sequence was very good.  I was very impressed with how they successfully brought about a fusion of Whiplash and Crimson Dynamo there at the end, even if the final fight with him was over a little too fast.  Speaking of War Machine and Rhodey, Don Cheadle did a much better job than Terrence Howard.  Terrence does not have a deep enough voice for Rhodey and they found the perfect replacement for him with Cheadle.  I loved how he was given more to work with in this film and it was a great thing to have him be more of a main character this time around.
 
Anyway, now it is on to talk about some of the more spoilerific parts of the movie and what they mean for what is coming next.  The first thing is how did Tony end up with Captain America's shield.  Since we know that his dad was a founder of SHIELD, does that mean that his dad also helped with the super soldier serum that created Cap?  I think he will be a big part of Captain America and it will be another great tie-in for the universe Marvel is creating.  The second thing I saw in the movie that is discussion worthy is that map that was in Nick Fury's 'office'.  If you did not notice it, it's the screen that is behind Tony and is shown various times when Fury and Tony meet at the end of the movie.  There were different markers on it and some of the locations are very interesting if you are familiar with the Avengers cast of characters.  The first dot that caught my interest was in Africa.  If you don't know, The Black Panther, a member of the Avengers is from Wakanda, which is an imaginary nation in Africa.  So, we may see the Black Panther as an Avenger.  A thing about this is that there has been talk for a long time about making a Black Panther movie.  The first person to be attached to this project was Wesley Snipes because he had been wanting to make a BP movie for a long time.  It fell through and he instead made Blade.  Some more recent talk has the villain from Serenity being attached to play Black Panther in the movie.  We will see what happens with that.  There were two dots that caught my interest after that and they are connected.  The two dots I saw were in New Mexico and Norway.  Now, the scene at the end of the movie shows a part of New Mexico where Thor's hammer had fallen and also Norway is where Thor is obviously from.  We already know about Thor being in the Avengers but we don't know how he makes it to Earth.  So I would assume that the Thor movie will talk about how Thor makes it to Earth and hopefully how his hammer ended up in New Mexico with him not near it.  In the comics, his human part, Donald Blake, is given a walking stick that when he taps it on the ground turns into the hammer and he transforms into Thor.  The final dot I noticed was in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and South America.  This dot is in the area where, in the Marvel U, where Atlantis was located.  The Marvel character attached to Atlantis is Namor and he is actually the person to find Captain America and bring him to New York, where another dot was placed.  Namor was originally introduced in Fantastic Four (I think) so he may not be able to be used since Fox owns the rights to the Fantastic Four.
 
So, to wrap up this review, I really enjoyed Iron Man 2 and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first one.  It does a good job of not falling prey to sequelitis in balancing the new characters and the sub-plots found throughout it.  It also does a great job of continuing to lay the foundation for the larger Marvel universe and I can't wait to see what they do with Thor, Captain America and The Avengers.
 
Final Verdict: 9 out of 10