I'm not saying it's The Dark Knight or anything amazing, but I enjoyed it. I thought the palladium poisoning was an effective plot device for Tony to act like an asshole, cause you have to have some sort of justification for him to still be a man child. I liked Don Cheadle more than Terrance Howard, and I liked how he acquired the Iron Man suit for the military. I liked Black Widow's role as an agent of shield keeping tabs on Stark. I liked how Tony's thoughts of him dying caused him to push away his family (Pepper, Rhodey). I thought Whiplash, while he was just another guy in a suit, was an effective villain because he did create his own Arc reactor, he was intellectually equal to Tony and more physically imposing, rather than just a thief like Obadiah Stane in the 1st film. Stark embracing the spotlight as "privatizing world peace" was very typical of his character.

Sure there were silly parts, like "making a new element" that was silly. But I wanted to see a lot of Iron Man fighting in suits, and I got lots of Iron Man fighting in suits, like the football suit (mark V?), then drunk Tony fighting Rhodey, then both Iron Man in the Mark VII and War Machine against all the drones. The final battle was sorta weak, but I liked how they brought back firing two repulser beams at eachother causes an explosion. I would have prefered that fight to be just a tad longer with the same ending.

I dunno man, I enjoyed the movie because there were explosions, it was funny, and it had a lot of eye candy. I wasn't trying to see a thought provoking piece of cinema, I wanted to see Iron Man blow shit up.