The late Steve Jobs did not like “Iron Man 2.” Like, at all. So much so, that right after seeing the film with his son, he ended up calling Disney CEO Bob Iger to personally complain about the tepid and misbegotten 2010 Marvel sequel.
This according to Iger himself in his recently-released book, “The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company.” Iger writes in the novel (via Screen Rant), “When ‘Iron Man 2’ came out, Steve [Jobs] took his son to see it and called me the next day. ‘I took Reed to see ‘Iron Man 2′ last night,’ he said. ‘It sucked.'”
I was also not a fan of “Iron Man 2” (it finished 19th out of 20 movies in my MCU rankings). I wrote this about the Jon Favreau-directed film:
“Iron Man 2 has an overstuffed script and not enough action scenes to sustain our interest. Is it worth shelling out hard-earned dollars to watch a movie that basically has no idea or direction in its path? Of course not. Director Jon Favreau brought a solid mix of action and humor to the 2008 original that we -as an audience- had the right to expect something special again. Here’s another sequel that fails miserably at that. Mickey Rourke—cue the comeback—and Robert Downey Jr do their best to save a movie that is the equivalent of watching paint dry. They deserved better than this and so did the audience which has not much to cheer about."
Hey, at least I consider its successor, Shane Black’s “Iron Man 3,” to be the most underrated movie of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe canon.