I watched Iron Man 2 with the boyfriend last weekend and the overall consensus was that it was overly self-indulgent. It seemed like the producers decided to take everything that was good about the first one and blow those things up, times infinity. Almost as if Tony Stark himself got a hold of the movie and decided to run amok with it, flamboyant personality in full swing with no checks or controls at all. Coupled with a really thin plot that tried to juggle in as much action as possible, quite a few of the characters ended up feeling like complete throwaways. As much as I enjoy watching Scarlett Johansson kick butt as mysterious/sexy red-haired agent chick, her character was really superfluous to the story. You could’ve easily taken her character out and it wouldn’t have detracted from the plot one bit. Samuel L. Jackson’s character also got no love in terms of back story. He basically appeared in the middle of the movie as the stern director of a secret government agency, drops off some goods, and then reappears for a few minutes in the end. It was a bit of a WTF? treatment. Has the comic book tropes been so ingrained in popular culture now that you can have your stereotypical kickass lady agent, stereotypical mysterious agency director, stereotypical bad rich dude who owns a big (rival) company, without having to spend any time explaining their backgrounds and motives? This was rather disappointing to see, not only because it was sloppy and lazy on the producers’ part, but also because much of the appeal for the first Iron Man was that it was NOT about your average stereotypical superhero – RDJ as Tony Stark stood in a league of his own.

But with all that said, Iron Man 2 was a fun watch – especially if you don’t have overly high expectations going in. It certainly was entertaining (cue Tony Stark in heavy-duty mechanical design mode, with his awesome equipment and robot assistants standing by) and it had quite a few “moments.” Although lots of good moments don’t always add up to a terrific movie, the first Iron Man was just so unexpectedly good that it was always going to be tough work for the sequel to measure up to the original.

So anyways, when I came across the “Heart Core” t-shirt via Topless Robot I thought – hum… yeah, despite my rant, this is still DO WANT!

P.S. Incidentally, it looks like the Australian release date for Iron Man 2 was a whole week ahead of the U.S. release date?! I had known we’d get it earlier down under but I thought it’d be just a few days’ difference. I’m just going to gloat now and feel special because most other movies usually get released (much) later in Australia than in the U.S.