Iron Man 2 is the second film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name from Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures.  It is the sequel to 2008′s Iron Man, and the second film in a planned trilogy.   Directed by Jon Favreau the film stars Robert Downey Jr reprising his role as Tony Stark.   The film plot is this Somewhere in Moscow an old man who is dying watches on TV the press conference of Tony Stark revealing himself to be Iron Man.  He calls his son Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) and tells him with his last breath that he passes his knowledge to him.  The old man had blueprints of the Arc Reactor, using these blueprints Ivan builds his own Arc Reactor along with a pair of arm mounted electrified whips powered by it.  Six months later Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) has used his Iron Man armor as a nuclear deterrent and a means of maintaining world peace.  He opens the Stark Expo in Flushing New York to continue his father’s legacy.  Tony is being pressured by the United States government and Senator Stern (Gary Shandling) in particular to hand over his armor technology to the government for military application.  Stark refuses publicly shaming rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) in demonstrating how rival states and groups are at least five years away from successfully recreating the technology.  Stark is not well he discovers that his palladium  in the Arc Reactor that keeps his heart beating has begun to leak into his body and is poisoning him, raising his blood toxicity levels and slowly killing him.   Slowly going off the rails Stark appoints his former personal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) CEO of Stark Industries, replacing her with Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson).  While racing his own team’s Formula 1 car at Monaco, Tony is attacked by Ivan but manages  to defeat him with the aid of his Mark V armor (a transforming briefcase).  Tony discovers that Ivan is the son of disgraced Russian physicist Anton Vanko, who collaborated on the first Arc Reactor with Tony s  father Howard (John Slattery) following his defection from the Soviet Union.  Anton had wanted to use the Arc Reactor to earn money, but Tony´s father had him deported back to Russia.  Where he subsequently died in poverty and passed on the technology to his son, who swore revenge against the Stark family.  more…