With the benefit of hindsight let's break things down:
1) Tony Stark is unlikeable.
In the previous movie RDJ makes a self absorbed rich playboy a**hole likeable and grow a conscience. It was a challenge the actor and director pulled off with grace. Meanwhile in this movie he plays an even more obnoxious rich playboy. Half the movie is spent hammering home just how self absorbed he becomes because he sees his death approaching. Let's not forget that his poisoning resulted from a shrapnel being in him thanks to his careless attitude and awful arms deals, which precisely already had an impact on him. Somehow this isn't acknowledged. This results in the character development being forcibly reset, and instead of looking cool the constant flaunting of his ego and wealth just grates on one's nerves. When he isn't busy being obnoxious, he is constantly humiliated by everyone around him. Potts rebuffs and ignores him like as if she suddenly owns Stark Industries, Coulson and Fury break into his home and cut his phone lines like he doesn't literally own a sattelite network, he is beaten up by Rhodes at his own party in his own house (but it's totally okay because he just let him you know), Natasha tricks him and super intelligence as well as his advanced AI, and for some reason he doesn't immediately rat her out to Potts or literally anyone else after discovering this, and she then proceeds to only listen to Potts, despite being hired as Stark's assistant.
2) Happy is nothing but a ridiculous punching bag.
Literally. Beaten up both by Tony and Natasha, and acting like a panicked little girl seeing a spider when confronting Whiplash.
3) Pepper Potts is ruthless, whiny, and awful.
Potts is promoted literally from secretary to CEO. Despite this incredible honor and unheard of gift, she gets over her shock pretty fast, constantly berating Tony about his private actions, and giving him the cold shoulder when he needs her, whining about how difficult it is to keep the business running when he gets into trouble, and consistently degrading any attempt Tony makes at trying to impress her. She whines in every difficult situation, and acts like an unlikeable entitled b**** whenever given any bit of power. Much in contrast to the powerful, just often slightly stunned, in-over-her-head, but never surrendering, secretary we saw in the first movie.
4) The movie is basically just a horrible who-gets-to-humiliate-who.
The Pecking order goes Natasha humiliates Potts, Stark, Happy, Hammer, while no one can even do anything to her, she's just so awesome, and cool, and sexy, and great, and proficient, and perfect in every way.... She is over everyone else. Potts rebuffs and humiliates Stark, berates Happy and humiliates Hammer, while everyone is only constantly seeking her favor, with only Natasha being above her with deception. Coulson humiliates Stark, while he is left alone by everyone, even his superior. Rhodes hurts and damages Stark constantly, while only his superiors and Vanko check him once. Stark easily beats Happy, easily entirely demolishes Vanko and his legacy, and literally non stop humiliates Hammer, while he is under Natasha, Potts, Coulson, Rhodes. Happy is over no one maybe Vanko and is under Natasha, Stark, Potts. Vanko and his fathers legacy is easily ignored and utterly demolished by Stark, (no sharks saw Stark's blood in the water apparently), but he is above Hammer and Rhodes. Hammer meanwhile is not above anyone, and Natasha, Potts, Happy, Stark, and Vanko, and even some literal side character journalist take turns in humiliating him.
This means that the definitive top two rungs are the girls, because empowerment can only happen through pushing others down apparently. While the supposedly main characters of Stark a genius and powerful industrialist, Vanko a genius, and Hammer a powerful industrialist, are among the bottom 4.
5) The US Airforce is painted as the true villain of the movie.
While in the first movie the Airforce didn't do anything wrong, and in fact were shown to actually try and do the right thing, here they are entirely antagonistic. Everything bad that happens results directly from Airforce meddling and them doing illegal things. Wanting the Iron Man system in the beginning, breaking into Tony's house to get it, the deal with Hammer, the resulting access of hammer to the tech and suit accelerating Vanko's plan, the resulting access of Hammer to higher circles of power, the Hammer presentation at the expo.
6) Rhodes is a horrible excuse for a human being let alone friend.
Despite ostensibly being his "friend", this despicable maniac breaks into Tony's lab, crashes his birthday party where Tony is clearly enjoying himself with the excuse that TONY is not acting right, trashes the entire place, and then finally steals his property, a dangerous weapons system at that. He ends up letting the villains have access to it, facilitates a deal giving the villains resources and power, endangers others while activating his stolen suit, and then has Tony expend time and energy on trying to save him. He offers literally ZERO redeeming qualities or any sort of actual friendship to Tony.
7) Hammer, the side villain is just pathetic.
He is essentially right in everything he says in the hearing. Tony should have played the clips of when he almost died, and crashed several times during the first movie, including narrowly missing civilians. Weapons systems like the Iron Man suit are dangerous. He is also constantly one upped and humiliated by Tony, which while reinforcing Tony's a**hole-ish behavior makes him seem pitiable. This can only be seen as justified or enjoyable by people who themselves enjoy kicking people when they're down. Look through the movie. There isn't a single scene with Justin Hammer which doesn't serve to explicitly humiliate him in SOME way. Had he organized a good lawyer instead of a deadly prison break he would be the sympathetic victim in the movie. And even in that one scene where he demonstrates his ruthlessness and power he is humiliated by the main villain. Who then does it again and again breaking into his security system, turning his words on him, ignoring him, killing his men, engineering his own thing behind his back.
8) Finally but most importantly: Vanko, the main villain is more sympathetic than the hero.
Without the scenes of gratuitous murder, the quirky and downtrodden guy whose father was sent to a life of suffering by his rich american billionaire partner, and who now fights against an obnoxious self absorbed billionaire controlling weapons of mass destruction, would absolutely be seen by everyone as the hero of the story. The fact that "he was motivated by greed" is used to try and make it seem like his father was the bad guy is absolutely insane. Howard Stark, himself did NOT CARE for his child, is only interested in his OWN legacy built on selling experimental WEAPONS for MONEY, CHEATED his partner out of his legacy, STEALING all the credit and money, had him DEPORTED, leading to Vanko being sentenced to a life of SUFFERING. And he is nonetheless being played up as some sort of hero who even in death teaches his son. And while both Howard and Tony got filthy rich off of selling weapons of war to governments, Anton Vanko had never been shown to have done anything close to as heinous as that, even when put into a death camp. Talk about psychopaths exploiting vulnerable people. Yikes.
This is what brings this movie close to being actively harmful.
It was competently shot, with nice CGI, and Elon Musk was in it, and an effort was made to make the villains at least appear bad despite their sympathetic stories, instead of just asserting it. So it's quite enjoyable if you can switch off your mind entirely. But if not, prepare to be thoroughly uncomfortable.
1) Tony Stark is unlikeable.
In the previous movie RDJ makes a self absorbed rich playboy a**hole likeable and grow a conscience. It was a challenge the actor and director pulled off with grace. Meanwhile in this movie he plays an even more obnoxious rich playboy. Half the movie is spent hammering home just how self absorbed he becomes because he sees his death approaching. Let's not forget that his poisoning resulted from a shrapnel being in him thanks to his careless attitude and awful arms deals, which precisely already had an impact on him. Somehow this isn't acknowledged. This results in the character development being forcibly reset, and instead of looking cool the constant flaunting of his ego and wealth just grates on one's nerves. When he isn't busy being obnoxious, he is constantly humiliated by everyone around him. Potts rebuffs and ignores him like as if she suddenly owns Stark Industries, Coulson and Fury break into his home and cut his phone lines like he doesn't literally own a sattelite network, he is beaten up by Rhodes at his own party in his own house (but it's totally okay because he just let him you know), Natasha tricks him and super intelligence as well as his advanced AI, and for some reason he doesn't immediately rat her out to Potts or literally anyone else after discovering this, and she then proceeds to only listen to Potts, despite being hired as Stark's assistant.
2) Happy is nothing but a ridiculous punching bag.
Literally. Beaten up both by Tony and Natasha, and acting like a panicked little girl seeing a spider when confronting Whiplash.
3) Pepper Potts is ruthless, whiny, and awful.
Potts is promoted literally from secretary to CEO. Despite this incredible honor and unheard of gift, she gets over her shock pretty fast, constantly berating Tony about his private actions, and giving him the cold shoulder when he needs her, whining about how difficult it is to keep the business running when he gets into trouble, and consistently degrading any attempt Tony makes at trying to impress her. She whines in every difficult situation, and acts like an unlikeable entitled b**** whenever given any bit of power. Much in contrast to the powerful, just often slightly stunned, in-over-her-head, but never surrendering, secretary we saw in the first movie.
4) The movie is basically just a horrible who-gets-to-humiliate-who.
The Pecking order goes Natasha humiliates Potts, Stark, Happy, Hammer, while no one can even do anything to her, she's just so awesome, and cool, and sexy, and great, and proficient, and perfect in every way.... She is over everyone else. Potts rebuffs and humiliates Stark, berates Happy and humiliates Hammer, while everyone is only constantly seeking her favor, with only Natasha being above her with deception. Coulson humiliates Stark, while he is left alone by everyone, even his superior. Rhodes hurts and damages Stark constantly, while only his superiors and Vanko check him once. Stark easily beats Happy, easily entirely demolishes Vanko and his legacy, and literally non stop humiliates Hammer, while he is under Natasha, Potts, Coulson, Rhodes. Happy is over no one maybe Vanko and is under Natasha, Stark, Potts. Vanko and his fathers legacy is easily ignored and utterly demolished by Stark, (no sharks saw Stark's blood in the water apparently), but he is above Hammer and Rhodes. Hammer meanwhile is not above anyone, and Natasha, Potts, Happy, Stark, and Vanko, and even some literal side character journalist take turns in humiliating him.
This means that the definitive top two rungs are the girls, because empowerment can only happen through pushing others down apparently. While the supposedly main characters of Stark a genius and powerful industrialist, Vanko a genius, and Hammer a powerful industrialist, are among the bottom 4.
5) The US Airforce is painted as the true villain of the movie.
While in the first movie the Airforce didn't do anything wrong, and in fact were shown to actually try and do the right thing, here they are entirely antagonistic. Everything bad that happens results directly from Airforce meddling and them doing illegal things. Wanting the Iron Man system in the beginning, breaking into Tony's house to get it, the deal with Hammer, the resulting access of hammer to the tech and suit accelerating Vanko's plan, the resulting access of Hammer to higher circles of power, the Hammer presentation at the expo.
6) Rhodes is a horrible excuse for a human being let alone friend.
Despite ostensibly being his "friend", this despicable maniac breaks into Tony's lab, crashes his birthday party where Tony is clearly enjoying himself with the excuse that TONY is not acting right, trashes the entire place, and then finally steals his property, a dangerous weapons system at that. He ends up letting the villains have access to it, facilitates a deal giving the villains resources and power, endangers others while activating his stolen suit, and then has Tony expend time and energy on trying to save him. He offers literally ZERO redeeming qualities or any sort of actual friendship to Tony.
7) Hammer, the side villain is just pathetic.
He is essentially right in everything he says in the hearing. Tony should have played the clips of when he almost died, and crashed several times during the first movie, including narrowly missing civilians. Weapons systems like the Iron Man suit are dangerous. He is also constantly one upped and humiliated by Tony, which while reinforcing Tony's a**hole-ish behavior makes him seem pitiable. This can only be seen as justified or enjoyable by people who themselves enjoy kicking people when they're down. Look through the movie. There isn't a single scene with Justin Hammer which doesn't serve to explicitly humiliate him in SOME way. Had he organized a good lawyer instead of a deadly prison break he would be the sympathetic victim in the movie. And even in that one scene where he demonstrates his ruthlessness and power he is humiliated by the main villain. Who then does it again and again breaking into his security system, turning his words on him, ignoring him, killing his men, engineering his own thing behind his back.
8) Finally but most importantly: Vanko, the main villain is more sympathetic than the hero.
Without the scenes of gratuitous murder, the quirky and downtrodden guy whose father was sent to a life of suffering by his rich american billionaire partner, and who now fights against an obnoxious self absorbed billionaire controlling weapons of mass destruction, would absolutely be seen by everyone as the hero of the story. The fact that "he was motivated by greed" is used to try and make it seem like his father was the bad guy is absolutely insane. Howard Stark, himself did NOT CARE for his child, is only interested in his OWN legacy built on selling experimental WEAPONS for MONEY, CHEATED his partner out of his legacy, STEALING all the credit and money, had him DEPORTED, leading to Vanko being sentenced to a life of SUFFERING. And he is nonetheless being played up as some sort of hero who even in death teaches his son. And while both Howard and Tony got filthy rich off of selling weapons of war to governments, Anton Vanko had never been shown to have done anything close to as heinous as that, even when put into a death camp. Talk about psychopaths exploiting vulnerable people. Yikes.
This is what brings this movie close to being actively harmful.
It was competently shot, with nice CGI, and Elon Musk was in it, and an effort was made to make the villains at least appear bad despite their sympathetic stories, instead of just asserting it. So it's quite enjoyable if you can switch off your mind entirely. But if not, prepare to be thoroughly uncomfortable.