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Neglect the controversy over whether or not Die Arduous is a Christmas film as a result of it clearly is and there are extra urgent issues: Like, is What If…?’s Die Arduous-spoofing Christmas episode really a greater Iron Man 2 than Iron Man 2?
I admit to recency bias. What If…? season 2 kicked off earlier this month, and the episode in query — which finds Darcy from the Thor motion pictures and Pleased Hogan organizing a vacation social gathering at Avengers Tower — solely simply dropped on Christmas Eve. However with 13 years of distance from Iron Man 2, I’m able to make daring MCU claims past “it dangerous.” Director Jon Favreau bought some issues proper in his sloppy 2010 sequel, and in a 30-minute ode to Die Arduous, What If…? reminds us of 1 win: Sam Rockwell was an ideal Justin Hammer. We simply didn’t get a lot of him on the time.
Iron Man 2 (which based mostly on many studies was written on the fly by Favreau, star Robert Downey Jr., and Tropic Thunder’s Justin Theroux) is a large number. The movie flits with Tony’s Demon in a Bottle arc, tries and fails to make a personality out of Mickey Rourke’s grunting, cockatoo-cuddling Whiplash, rapidly promotes Rhodey to Warfare Machine and Nick Fury to a real Avengers wrangler, introduces Natasha Romanoff in essentially the most grating manner conceivable, and offers Elon Musk a cameo that appears worse and worse as the times go by. Fairly dangerous film!
However Favreau additionally solid Sam Rockwell as weapons producer Justin Hammer. In an alternate universe, he was the centerpiece villain, the slimeball various to Tony Stark who may sustain with the one-liners. In Iron Man 2 he’s a plot system to get Iron Man preventing armored drones. However talking of alternate universes, What If…? has come to his rescue.
Photograph: Paramount/Everett Assortment
What If…? season 2’s third episode imagines what may have occurred after the occasions of Iron Man 2. On this world, Hammer nonetheless hijacked the Stark Expo, wielded Tony’s know-how in opposition to the hero, and wound up in jail for his wrongdoings. However Hammer didn’t develop within the slammer — he festered. And when he bought out, he proceeded to Stark Tower, to tug a Hans Gruber on Stark throughout the Avengers vacation gala.
Not each big-name Marvel actor has returned to voice their characters in What If…?; since season 1, Mark Wingert and Lake Bell have been doing a surprisingly high quality job recreating the vocal tics of Iron Man and Black Widow as beforehand performed by Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson. However the win right here is getting Rockwell again as Justin Hammer, who’s firing off cackling Christmas-themed puns like they’re Mark 46 armor rounds. He’s residing for a sort of mayhem that Iron Man 2 simply didn’t present for somebody who could be this depraved.
Whereas Tony and his fellow Avengers do ultimately present as much as save the day — get able to see Captain America in an elf costume — What If…? offers one other Iron Man 2 participant his due: Pleased Hogan. Possibly Favreau was too modest to provide himself a good set-piece in both of two Iron Man motion pictures, however right here, he’s the John McClane crawling via vents, outrunning gunmen, and, thanks to a couple drops of Hulk blood, swinging via glass home windows with the intention to bust skulls. Favreau additionally returns to voice the character, which not solely makes it pop on a efficiency degree, however elevages the “what if” of all of it — what if this had been Iron Man 2 all alongside?
Writers A.C. Bradley and Matthew Chauncey together with director Bryan Andrews keep away from loading the Christmas diversion with an excessive amount of connectivity or lore — it’s actually simply Pleased vs. Hammer to the tip, with explosive set-pieces courtesy of the Iron Legion. In a manner it’s a card out of the Shane Black playbook, who would properly make a grounded, Christmastime Marvel film of his personal with Iron Man 3.
We are able to’t undo what’s achieved, so nothing will substitute Iron Man 2 within the ranked historical past of Marvel motion pictures, however What If…? a minimum of vindicates its existence in a manner no Marvel story has actually achieved. But when it’s true that Hammer is sitting in a jail cell someplace rotting, perhaps the MCU animated alternate universe anthology sequence can wake somebody as much as the truth that the franchise is sitting on gold. Get Sam Rockwell again within the combine — let’s go together with Thunderbolts? — stat.
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