Post by Mutant 77 on May 2, 2019 22:25:07 GMT
I think a lot of that was because The Dark Knight had come out a mere two years earlier and was considered by many the new standard for comic book movies and while the initial Iron Man did well the second wasn't considered as good so IM2 suffered in comparison to both of them. As I recall IM2 came out right as the campaign to get The Dark Knight to the top of the IMDB rankings was peaking, and you know how some people like to argue that not only is what they like the best, anything comparable must suck like a blast furnace.
Yeah, it was an uncertain era. The criticism surrounding "X-Men Origins" (which was more comic book-ish than its predecessors) didn't help.
Ironically, IM2 was vastly better than "Thor" (which was good anyway), "Thor: The Dark World" (so so) and "The Incredible Hulk" (mediocre), but these three were better received in terms of fan-response.
And, of course, "Iron Man 2" is a million light years ahead of the two Ant-Man movies or Ragnarok.