Going to a party at Tony Stark’s house would be awesomely fun, and Iron Man 2 has its fair share of highly enjoyable scenes, though not as many as Iron Man 1, but it definitely could have used some science consulting help. Despite Tony Stark’s apparently scientifically flawless use of a soldering iron in #1, here in #2 he constructs what appears to be a cross between a laser and a small synchrotron (which shot light in the wrong direction, inward instead of outward – or possibly looked like it might have been diverting the whole beam, which wouldn’t work for more than about a nanosecond – and no matter what kind of light it was emitting, that’s no way to make a new element, it needed to be an atomic particle beam). Then he uses a freakishly large plumber’s wrench (if you can’t use the right tool, always use a bigger one) to steer a coherent blue light onto a small piece of metal and create his new element. Wow! Now the synchrotron-accelerator-cyclotron-laser do-hickey is one thing, but creating a new element to stick in his chest piece is another. I believe that a scientific consult from almost any high school chemistry class could have helped with this part.
My high school freshman son remarked that any new element he might have created using proper tools would have been so unstable and radioactive that it probably would have killed him faster than the palladium he was trying to replace (which actually is considered to be at most “slightly hazardous” and of low-toxicity – five minutes of googling could have gotten them that info). Chemists here at LSU and around the world are creating exciting new metallic compounds and crystal forms every day that are finding uses in computer and cell phone technologies, why not have Mr. Stark make a new one of these instead of a new element? Or even just a new isotope of an element? Either would make more sense (– maybe he was making the first atoms of unobtainium by bombarding nonsensium with looks-like-blue-lightium). At least they had the good sense to add a pithy “Well, that was easy.” one-liner at the end of the scene.
No one expects Sci-Fi to be totally accurate, that’s why it’s Sci-Fi, but it’s often not that hard to avoid techno-lameness. It’s quite interesting to ask, however, why certain parts of a movie, play, or story induce a cringe factor, while others don’t. Why didn’t it bother me that the Iron Man suit does all that it does, or that it even exists at all? Why didn’t it bother me that Ivan (like Tony before him) could create such a suit (and some amazingly adroit drones, and a second suit) all in a matter of months, working alone? Why didn’t it bother me that there seems to be a lack of correspondence between the tiny eye slits in the Iron Man mask and the full heads-up display that the wearer sees? (A: tiny cameras, of course). Why didn’t it bother me that whatever it is that comes out of Iron Man’s hand is never really explained? Or that Tony Stark (and Ivan) both invented amazing new power sources? Conversely, why did the palladium, the cyclotron-synchrotron-accelerator-pretend-erator, and the Starkly-unobtainium all bother me? I believe it’s because a lot of the science they got wrong, or presented very poorly, is known science – real science – and it’s just really lazy to get that wrong (and thus really makes you cringe while watching the story), and, quite frankly would have been easy to fix, while most of the rest is stuff that doesn’t exist yet, so it’s not that bothersome that it is fantastical or non-realistic. It’s like watching a film when a blue-jay and an imaginary new bird fly into the picture and the main character says: “Hey, look at that azure-wagsbacker and that harleybird.” Who cares what they call the made up bird, but the blue-jay mistake is going to make a lot of people groan. At least upon reflection that seems to be where my cringe factor line is, other people’s lines will be at different places for different reasons.
All in all, though, it’s definitely a fun summer blockbuster action film – far better than gut-wrenchers like Transformers 2. Also on the good side, Scarlett Johansson and Mickey Rourke are incredible additions – even with half his dialogue in muttered Russian, Mickey Rourke actually upstages the always-entertaining (in jail or out) Robert Downey, Jr.