“Iron Man 2” succeeds exactly like its predecessor: Jon Favreau choreographs the slam-bang action with a light comedic touch aided by Robert Downey Jr.’s megawatt charm. Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, and Mickey Rourke form the rest of the constellation of acting talent, making the events seem more like the rowdy back room at the Vanity Fair Oscars party than the moronic Hollywood comic book movie it would otherwise be.

The film sparkles. The film crackles with cool. The film is proof that engaging actors given a chance to use their gifts will always trump special effects. Favreau is more at home with comedy, and most of the action sequences work because of smaller, funny little flourishes, like Johansson dispatching a dozen armed goons with jujitsu and then, as a coup de grāce, casually spraying mace in the last goon’s dazed mug as she struts away from the carnage like a runway model. They’re far from Shakespearean, but these are characters worth watching.

A good deal of credit must also go to Justin Theroux, the writer, for devising an action story that reserves plenty of room for the stars to shine. It is precisely the human element that gives the “Iron Man” franchise some dramatic chops as well as thematic interest. As in the first film, “Iron Man 2” presents us with the man-as-corporation. As Tony Stark says, “I am Iron Man. The suit and I are one”. The same can be said for his relationship to the corporation. There is a subplot here in which Stark attempts to pass the reins to his faithful assistant, Pepper Potts (Paltrow), but this ultimately proves a failure. No substitute is possible. Tony Stark is Stark Industries.

Theroux’s script takes a ambivalent position about this. On the one hand, because Tony is the company, and Tony’s personality is less than stable, much harm befalls the company, and the grateful nation that relies upon it, when he indulges in his rich kid antics and nearly commits suicide by hedonism. On the other hand, because Tony is the company, a mad genius and absolute ruler with nobody to clog his doings with red tape, he possesses world-saving power. The film is as fascinated by his godlike autonomy as it is anxious about it. If the nation can be saved in the blink of an eye, it can also be plunged into chaos just as quickly.

Unlike Clark Kent and Superman, or Peter Parker and Spiderman, Stark’s two identities are not discrete. In fact, Stark has no disguise or alter ego. The suit is just a tool he uses, like Tom Brady wearing shoulder pads. The world knows he is Iron Man and loves him for it. The opening sequence, in which he arrives at his company’s year-long Tech Fair, is a hilarious send-up of CEO showmanship. Stark is half Steve Jobs, half Tony Robbins. The thousands assembled eat up the ham to the rockin’ tune of AC/DC. They love Stark the man as much as Iron Man the hero, and this is all clearly placed within the context of Stark Industries, a massive company equal parts Apple and Halliburton.

The interesting thing here is not that the movie’s fictional America is asked to love a corporation, but that they are asked to love a man who is a corporation. Stark is an avatar for a type of non-human entity that the U.S. recognizes as having the rights of a human being (as in, most recently, the Supreme Court’s ruling in January that corporations have as much right to political speech as individuals). Thus everyone tacitly accepts that the safety of the nation—indeed, the world—depends upon a private businessman.

The word “charisma” denotes more than mere charm. Strictly understood, charisma is a divine gift enjoyed by rare individuals capable of influencing great masses of people. The persuasiveness of a charismatic individual does not rely on logic alone but an indefinable ‘X’ factor that builds a cult of personality around itself. Downey Jr.’s star power, harnessed to the Iron Man franchise, presents us with a character defined by an unprecedented fusion of charisma, technology, and business.

The film consistently holds to the man-as-corporation concept, such that Stark is a superhero not only qua superhero but as the best of many competing businessmen, the CEO of CEOs. The bad-guy mastermind is another CEO, Justin Hammer, played by a smarmy Sam Rockwell. Other competing nations, like Iran and North Korea, are presented as businesses, too, just failing ones. They are mocked for lacking sufficient R & D prowess; one of the movie’s funniest bits, a nod to “RoboCop”, has Stark showing the U.S. Senate clips of disastrous Iron Man knockoffs manufactured by the “axis of evil” countries. In this moral universe, evil means bad business practices.

What gives Stark Industries the edge? Tony is smarter than the next guy, for sure, but there is also the matter of Iron Man’s “heart”, the energy core that powers the suit. As in the first film, the suit’s energy core is a major plot point. Stark must find a new power source, as the old one is poisoning his body. To find this power source involves coming to terms with his late father, played by John Slattery (of course it’s “Mad Men”’s Roger Sterling). It’s the old cliche of Daddy’s withheld love. In making peace with his father Stark discovers the secret to the “clean energy” power source. The secret involves an element that does not exist in nature. No problem. In the ultimate Bush-style rejection of the “reality-based” community, Tony holes up in the lab and jerry-rigs himself a new element. The return to the father has given him total mastery over nature and allowed him to take back the mantle of authority from the woman who temporarily controls Stark Industries. Patriarchal order is restored for man, corporation, and country.

In short, Stark is almost a perfect fascist superhero. Not quite, though. Pointedly, he is not aligned with the state. He remains a private citizen, Stark Industries a private corporation. As Theroux’s script makes plain, the government needs Iron Man but doesn’t trust him. Their pact is friendly yet often uneasy, as typified when the once-hostile Senator Stern, a sourpuss played by Garry Shandling, pins a medal on Stark’s chest for saving the world with a grudging, constipated smile. The tenuous alliance in this scene is the new norm imposed by neoliberalism.

Everyone knows two things about Stark. One, he’s fundamentally a good man and, well, a superhero. Two, he’s a puckish party animal prone to wild mood swings. These are a package deal; his volatility is a necessary condition of his heroism. Citizens must accept they’re on a rollercoaster ride of global-scale existential crises, the safe resolutions of which are tied to the mercurial moods of a billionaire playboy. Iron Man is thus the ideal avatar for the post-Bush, post-financial meltdown age in which Totalitarianism 2.0 looks like benevolent militarism, American exceptionalism, de facto rule of corporations, the privatization of public safety, and the sheer gee-whiz fun of the high-tech security state. Theroux’s script is cagey enough to make its warnings plentiful and visible amid the movie’s undeniable excitements, a useful meta-commentary on the ambiguity of our entertainments.