Iron Man 2 leads into The Avengers movie.

Marvel Comics is opening up a door that has never been opened before. Linking the Marvel movies together to form a single movie universe could be a disaster or a genius move, we'll just have to wait and see. I will be paying to see whatever Marvel movies come out because I'm a fanboy, comic book collector, & geek. It will be challenging to have so many big name superheroes in the Avengers movie without it being at least 4 hours long. The X-Men movies were good, but superhero teams don't translate so well into superhero team movies mainly because you don't have enough time to establish the origins of team members. But I guess that Marvel has decided to put out individual movies to establish the backgrounds of the team members of the Avengers which may work fine in the long run.

I thought the movie was just as good as the first Iron Man. Iron Man 2 had more comedic moments in it, but the laughs fit in very well. I believe there will definitely be an Iron Man 3, at least I hope so. Using Whiplash and Hammer as villains brought a decent amount of balance to the film. I like how they worked in more of the Avengers storyline. It was also good to see Howard Stark in the movie too, you never hear too much about Howard Stark in the comic books.

I guess how Fury ended things with Stark left Marvel room to go either way in terms of having Iron Man in the new Avengers movie. Finding Thor's hammer in the desert sets up the new Thor movie that is being worked on. The Captain America shield that Tony used to prop up his particle accelerator machine had to be an early prototype of some sort of Captain America's shield. I'm guessing that Howard Stark played a role in the creation of Captain America's shield back in the day. Will we see Howard Stark in the upcoming Captain America movie? It will be interesting to see where Marvel goes from here. There are still plenty of good villains in the Iron Man universe. I'm guessing that the next movie will be about either The Mandarin, Modock, or A.I.M. The end of the movie where Tony kisses Pepper makes no sense. They tried to develop a relationship in the first Iron Man and that didn't work, so why do it again in Iron Man 2?

I don't expect the upcoming Avengers movie to be anything like the comic book because it simply can't be, but it should still be good if done right without being hindered by a limited budget. I have no doubts that the Avenger movie may be the most expensive movie Marvel makes to date. We'll just have to wait and see true believers!