Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with the Slate's spoiler special podcast on Iron Man 2.

My guest today in the studio is Jessica Winter. Hi, Jessica.

Hello, Dana.

Who is an editor at O Magazine and also a frequent Slate contributor and also a big Robert Downey Jr. fan, I understand, right?

Me and the entire world. It's true. I just think of you in particular as one because I know you've perennially pondered writing some sort of assessment and unified theory of Robert Downey for Slate. The subject is too daunting for me. You haven't wrapped your mind around it yet. I can't do it? Well, can you make this just a partial one chapter in your research? And can you start off giving us a little bit and I'll chime in, but let's do a quick

reaction first of all.

Did you like Iron Man too overall?

Recommend?

Um, I didn't dislike it, but I was surprised because I'm disposed to like the movie

a lot, I think, and I loved the first one and, you know, my feelings about Mr. Downey. And I just felt kind of underwhelmed by this one. I think it had a lot of the familiar symptoms of sequelitis, sort of, you know, too much, but not enough. You know, too many characters trying to cram in too much,

but also not really filling out any of those outlines,

whether they be set pieces or characters or plot points.

It just turned up the volume on the first one in ways that kind of became tiring.

It quite literally turned up the volume. I mean, in terms of, we saw it on an IMAX screen last night, and I actually at a certain point, took out my head, my ear vuds and put them in my ears, not connected to anything, just as some means of blocking some of the sound.

It definitely has that blockbuster level of stimuli swamping.

There's at least two points where the floor rumbled beneath the has that blockbuster level of stimuli swamping.

There's at least two points where the floor rumbled beneath us.

It felt like a subway train or something.

So it was an impressive feat of sound design.

Nothing else.

If your drum shattering is the point of sound design.

So let's talk about some of the things that it has too much of in terms of just the plot and try to quickly walk people through the story, and we can stop and meander along the way

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