LOS ANGELES — “Figure out what the audience wants and give it to them,” Robert Downey, Jr., said from the podium outside the El Capitan Theatre at the “Iron Man 2” premiere on Monday night.
Downey may have been kidding, in that knowing, smirking, I’m-in-on-the-joke-too way of his that defies you not to like him. But the statement well described the evening, summing up how the presentation of the franchise has neutralized many criticisms of its popcorn charms. Downey and Marvel know the commercial juggernaut they have here, and as they have turned it into a selling point.
Indeed, the premiere of the Marvel-produced, Paramount-distributed, Justin Theroux-penned sequel delivered the pleasing fun to the crowd, as director and co-star Jon Favreau, standing on a makeshift podium on Hollywood Boulevard, introduced the litany of stars, from Mickey Rourke to Gwyneth Paltrow to Samuel Jackson to Downey himself.
(The film opens wide on May 7.)
Then out came “The Ironettes” (like the Rockettes, only with a superhero motif) who did a heels-up, devil-may-care number to parallel an on-screen performance from one of the film’s first sequences.
The critics will offer their assessments of the movie, but our own quick reaction was of a film rich in flash, generous in wit (never before has such a fast-talking, confidence-brimming wiseacre donned a superhero costume) and thin on meaningful storytelling (but thick with the false-start kind). For a film that will be one the biggest of the summer and possibly the biggest three-day opener of all time, “Iron Man 2” has a tricky job, commercially speaking. It needs to satisfy those who crave more of the mythology introduced by the first film, but it also needs to stand alone.
as it aims to bring in even more people than the first (and squash that movie’s $98-million opening and $318-million total).
