User blog comment:Hawkeye2701/Review4U: Iron Man 2 (Film)/@comment-1895174-20140413062100

Don Cheadle, as I covered before, I feel lacks the presence that James Rhodes should have, he's certainly a better foil to Tony, but he just doesn't feel like a military man who was decorated up the wazoo.

I think it's more a problem with the script than with Cheadle. Iron Man 2 maybe has one too many characters to keep track of. In this regard, Rhodey gets the shaft.

''Justin Hammer... just so much of a stupid ass it's just hard to believe.''

I loved this version of Justin Hammer. Sam Rockwell is  the man , and he brought a lot of energy to this very different version of Justin Hammer. This one's still a foil of Tony Stark, just in a different way. Instead of being an older, greedier Tony Stark (which would just make him a retread of Stane from the first movie), Rockwell's Justin Hammer is what Tony Stark would be if he wasn't all that good at his job...or turned himself into a superhero. Seriously, Iron Man 2 ' s Justin Hammer is probably exactly what Tony was like before he got trapped in a cave.

And all that being said, give me my Marvel One-Shot: Group Therapy, which is the one-shot where Ty Burrell's Doc Samson from The Incredible Hulk holds a group therapy session with a bunch of forgotten characters from the MCU, like Hammer, and Tim Blake Nelson's Samuel Sterns, and Dylan Minette's Donnie Gill, etc.

Ivan Vanko is by far, one of my favourite villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

See, Vanko is one part of the movie I'd say doesn't work so well. With all that was going on in this movie, Vanko's conflict with Tony seems the most extraneous; that Tony almost forgets that Vanko exists between Monaco and the film's climax. Cutting to whatever he and Hammer are up to mostly serves to remind us that he's in this movie. But at least Hammer has some charisma and comic relief going for him, Vanko's just a wet blanket who keeps rambling on about his bird. And then we get the finale where he shows up in a suit of armor, becoming the retread of Stane that Hammer decidedly was not.

As for his comic book background, Vanko's an amalgam of Whiplash and the Crimson Dynamo. Let's face it, Iron Man doesn't have the best rogues gallery, so taking the best parts of a few different villains and blending them together is for the best. Just wish the execution was a bit better.