Cultural Crossovers: Iron Man 2

Wow, our watching cycle is short these days. Maybe I’ll start dribbling these out, oh, once a month or so, so they don’t eat the blog.

Once again, I live-blog in-culture:

• Oh, yeah. Tony’s entrance to the Expo is exactly how they do it in Mer Covales. The audience loves it.
• (Of course, I’ve mentioned before how I based the second movement of the Empire’s anthem on Make Way For Tomorrow, Today.)
• Also, he just won all the points with the audience for shutting down and openly mocking Senator Thieving Assclown.
• The audience that saw the first movie is undoubtedly cheering on his choice in successor, too.
• (To step out-culture for a moment, I personally love the Elon Musk cameo.)
• Kudos to Vanko for coming up with a functional equivalent of the mollywhip which isn’t suicidal to use. (This falls under “acceptable breaks from reality”.) Still not a very practical weapon, but it is showy as hell.
• Man, the “suit-case” is some awesome tech-porn.
• Vanko’s not wrong about what happens when the illusion of invulnerability is broken. The military guys nod along. (Remember, one of the key doctrines in their way of war is “shock and awesome”.)
• Man, mortality sucks and makes folks crazy. Still, hell of a way to end a party.
• And yeah, an intervention probably was called for…
• …WHICH STILL DOES NOT MAKE TAKING THAT SUIT OKAY, RHODEY.
• (Even if Tony did set it up.)
• SHIELD has some… interesting ethics. (Especially if they knew what they were hanging onto all these years.) Of course, they are more or less this universe’s version of the Fifth Directorate, complete with the awesome-mixed-with-squick sensations.
• The public safety people just cringed at the thought of all the folk about to go out and build particle accelerators in their basements.
• Oh, God, Hammer, you are such an asshat. Also, an idiot. Also, a walking cliché of everything a businesssoph shouldn’t be or do.
• On the other hand, it’s a pleasure to watch Black Widow work. And without benefit of PK-fu, even.
• I could have said this at any number of moments through the movie, but Pepper is definitely one of the best executors to have ever executored.

In general: yeah, as I said regarding the previous one, with minor cultural fluency tweaks, that’ll play just fine.

(Oh, and regarding the stinger: well, that’s a funny-looking KEW.)