Phase One · Infinity Saga
Iron Man 2
Tony Stark deals with the fallout of revealing he is Iron Man and a new rival.
One scene during the credits
Availability changes by country and by week, so this searches JustWatch rather than guessing.
Can you skip Iron Man 2?
No. It carries part of the main MCU throughline, and what comes after it assumes you have seen it. The next essential title is Thor. In chronological order, reaching it takes about 8h 17m of essential viewing across 4 titles. See the full MCU order.
Marked essential, and it is the clearest example on this page of the flag meaning position rather than quality. It introduces Black Widow, Rhodes in the armour and the Avengers Initiative properly, and it is the weakest of the Phase One films.
The problem is that it is doing three jobs and only one of them is its own story. There is a plot about Tony dying of the thing keeping him alive, which is good and is resolved by his father leaving a scientific breakthrough hidden in a model village. There is a rival arms manufacturer. There is a Russian physicist with electric whips. And there is a large amount of work setting up films that had not been made yet, including a sequence where Nick Fury explains the slate.
Mickey Rourke's Ivan Vanko is the best idea in it, a man with a legitimate grievance against the Stark family, and he disappears for most of the middle. The Monaco sequence, where he walks onto a racetrack and cuts a car in half, is the one genuinely great scene.
The ending is two suits fighting drones in a garden. Sam Rockwell is enjoying himself more than anybody. Watch it for the furniture it installs.
MCU guides
Where it sits in the MCU order
- Release order
- #3 of 80
- Chronological order
- #5 of 80
- Released
- 7 May 2010
- In-universe era
- Heroes Emerge
What to watch next
In release order
In chronological order