A Stark Difference

Each week during the Summer of Superheroes, SuperMike Matthews breaks down the ins and outs of a current superhero franchise. Spoilers may follow, so read at your own risk.    

                                                               

This week: THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN! 

First, some history and a disclaimer. 

The first superhero to make it to the big screen was obviously not Iron Man, but Superman, as it should be. (The year that it happened, 1951, is a bit more surprising.) Following Supes was Batman, and coming in a distant third was, uh… Swamp Thing.

Which is weird. 

Skipping ahead to this century, the current ubiquity of superhero movies began with Brian Singer’s X-Men series, a franchise that is still going strong after 14 years and 7 films, with no end in sight. Our discussion should really start there, especially since the latest X-Men just came out two weeks ago, but it won’t, because in my opinion, any worthwhile discussion of the X-Men is hardly entry-level stuff. The various backstories and relationships that fill their corner of the Marvel universe can get pretty confusing, even for me – which is saying something, as you’ll soon realize. An intelligent analysis of the X-Men franchise is therefore left as an exercise for the reader.

Iron Man, by contrast, is a recent and extremely accessible starting point, which makes sense, since that was kind of the whole idea behind the movie in the first place.

Some time in 2004, the folks at Marvel Studios got it into their head that they wanted to start making their own movies, instead of just selling away film rights like they’d done in the past. Even though the rights to their most famous properties – Spider-Man, X-Men, The Fantastic Four – were no longer theirs at that point, the characters that they did have were more than enough for what they had in mind. Beginning with Iron Man, and continuing over the next few years, Marvel launched multiple, distinct franchises, all of which take place within a single shared universe: Earth-199999, a.k.a. the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Each series of films tells its own story, but the various films also have the potential to share characters, locations, and backstory with one another. It’s an ambitious idea, and it’s actually very intuitive and satisfying, once you can wrap your head around what is and isn’t part of it.

As of May 16, 2015, the MCU includes: 

• All Iron Man movies 
• The 2008 Hulk movie (It does NOT include the 2003 one) 
• All post-1990 Captain America movies 
• Both Thor movies 
• Both Avengers films
• Guardians of the Galaxy 
• The ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter
• The Netflix series Daredevil 

Any other comic-based film or TV show you might see, even if it opens with the Marvel logo, falls outside this continuity. 

Before we can talk about any of that, though, we have to look at the individual pieces, and the first of those is Iron Man.

Important as he may be in the mainstream Marvel comics universe, * Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, wasn’t exactly a well-known character when his first film came out in 2008. I, for one, will admit that I had no idea who the guy was when I went to see it. (Again, this will surprise you very soon.) And yet, the movie was a smash hit that turned out to be the perfect foundation for Marvel’s future plans, in no small part because it dared to make its themes more important than smash-boom action.

 * Earth-616, if you were wondering. 

The character of Tony Stark/Iron Man dates all the way back to 1963, when Stan Lee created him as a vehicle to explore the day’s then-topical Cold War themes, specifically the role that American capitalism played in the fight against Communism. The general beats of his origin story have remained consistent over the years * but in order to keep the character topical, the country in which it all happened was eventually retconned (retroactively changed) to Afghanistan, rather than the original Vietnam. Now, instead of fighting Communists, Iron Man fights terrorists. Well… not all the time. Or even very often, really. But the point is that the zeitgeist is in there, and his film counterpart, at least, makes the most of that.

* As seen in Tales of Suspense #39: On a visit to a foreign country, billionaire weapons manufacturer Tony Stark was abducted by the enemy, who tried to force him to construct a WMD on their behalf. Much to their surprise, Stark instead used their materials to construct a robotic suit of armor, allowing him to defeat his captors and escape! 

In fact, two out of the four movies Iron Man has appeared in – and 2/3 of the films that he’s starred in alone – feature terrorists as either primary or secondary villains. Take a second to consider that. That’s a really high percentage for a superhero franchise, guys. It makes sense, of course: the narrower scope of the MCU means there are fewer supervillains to fight, and I also imagine that any superhero that gets kidnapped by terrorists isn’t going to just walk away from that without some sort of vendetta. Sure, the movies don’t actually concern themselves all that much with the intricacies of real-world politics. The strongest stance they can be said to take is: “Terrorism is bad, and it would probably be in our best interest if we stopped accidentally and/or intentionally facilitating it.” But the fact that that second clause is in there at all means Iron Man put a lot more thought into the issue than most depictions of big-screen terrorism. That’s worth something.

I'm looking at you, Zero Dark Thirty! Unless I'm not. I haven't seen it. It might be fine.

So yeah, Iron Man has more on its mind than just being a superhero movie. Most of Marvel’s movies do, for that matter. Which is good, because that method – rejecting the superhero genre in favor of genre films that star superheroes – slows the onset of superhero fatigue, a phenomenon that could really put a damper on Marvel’s plans to keep building up the MCU through at least 2028.

Oh, did I mention that they were planning on doing that? Because they totally are. Me, I’m not even confident that human civilization will last that long, but hey, more power to them. Best laid plans of mice and all that.

The thing you have to understand about the MCU is that, even though it’s a shared universe, it isn’t necessarily one that’s used to seeing superheroes run around doing… whatever it is they do. Justice, I guess. The sudden emergence of these superhumans is an earth-shattering development, and if the audience is going to properly share that headspace, things had to start out kind of small, with a premise that was relatively grounded. Iron Man was a smart choice in that regard. True, a genius billionaire flying around in his weaponized metal suit is still a bit out there, but it’s a lot more believable than a man who transforms into an unstoppable monster when he gets angry. Or an alien so old and powerful that the Vikings mistook him for a god. Or a guy with a shield who can, like, run really fast.

Hey… maybe we should have led with that one.

The entire MCU could have fallen apart immediately if Iron Man wasn’t a success. And Iron Man probably wouldn’t have been a success if we didn’t have a reason to care about the man inside the suit. Fortunately, Marvel recognized the potential in a character like Tony Stark, and knew how to take advantage of it; unlike some superheroes, Tony has a clear and ongoing character arc that spans all four of the movies he’s been in.

The first thing anyone will realize about Tony Stark is that, quite simply, he’s a douche. He’s an extremely charismatic and likable douche, but he’s a douche all the same. I would even argue that the continued interest in the Iron Man films comes mainly from the audience’s desire to keep on watching as this douche very gradually becomes… less of a douche.

I said ‘very gradually’ just then, but in fairness to Mr. Stark, the entire first movie actually comprises a pretty massive change in his ideology. That’s all the film really is, when you get down to it. Yes, the obligatory suit-on-suit battle is there, taking up maybe ten or fifteen minutes at the end, but the core conflict of the story is that of a man trying to fundamentally reinvent himself in the wake of a tragedy – albeit in a way that’s a bit more on-the-nose than most attempts.

The Tony Stark that we meet at the beginning of Iron Man isn’t exactly a bad person, he just doesn’t feel like dedicating himself to the good of the world. He’s not lazy, and he takes full advantage of his genius intellect… when it benefits him. He is, in that sense, unabashedly self-centered and narcissistic. He makes weapons, he sells weapons, he gets paid, and he gets to be famous. That’s good enough for him.

But everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked after Tony was kidnapped. The jagged piece of shrapnel in his chest, inches from his heart and held in place by nothing more than a homemade electromagnet? That’s a huge wake-up call in regard to his mortality. The sacrifice of fellow scientist Ho Yinsen during Tony’s escape? Now he has to consider just how much his own life is worth. And the fact that Tony’s Humvee was blown up with Stark Industries weaponry? Well, that’s gonna make a guy take a good hard look at what exactly his company has really been up to lately.

The first thing Tony does after arriving back home is to shut down Stark Industries’ weapons division, rebranding the company as a manufacturer of clean energy. Then, after he turns his prototype armor into a fully functioning suit, he flies back to Afghanistan and shows those Ten Rings sons of bitches what for. In short, Tony feels responsible now, something you never could have said about his old self, and it’s a good look for him. Interestingly, we’re about halfway through the movie at this point, if not farther, and as the more astute of you may have noticed, a supervillain has yet to emerge.

Iron Man’s rogues gallery is not a particularly distinguished one, even within the comic book world. With one notable exception, Tony’s foes are mostly just people in other suits like his, which… you know, is fine. It’s not like the films shied away from that angle at all. But they can’t really stand on their own, either, something that ultimately worked to the films’ benefit. Because none of these guys are particularly iconic, the writers were able to tweak their identities to fit the exact stories they wanted to tell. It’s a good lesson for superhero films in general: don’t pick the ‘best’ villain, pick the right villain. After all, if you start with the archenemy, where are you going to go from there?

The answer, apparently, is "multiple villains at once," and no one needs that. 

The villain the writers chose in this instance was Tony’s business partner, Obadiah Stane. * Put simply, he wants Tony dead so that he can run the company himself, and ends up building a knock-off version of Tony’s suit to fight him with and then sell en masse. It’s a simple backstory that flows naturally into what’s going on with Tony, to the point where you’d think Obie was always a crucial part of Iron Man’s origin. As it happens, he’s not; he was just rewritten for the film to be thematically relevant. (Take note, Spider-Man writers!)

 * a.k.a. The Iron Monger! 

At the end of the first film, in a crucial moment, Tony declares to the world that, yes, he is Iron Man (cue Black Sabbath), something it took his comic-book counterpart almost 40 years to do. By throwing away his secret identity immediately, this Tony Stark places himself in an entirely different category of superhero: the kind that has no intention of living a double life. This is who Tony is now, for better or for worse, and he has no choice but to live up to his new reputation in everything he does.

Following that train of thought, Iron Man 2 starts with Tony on top of the world. For the last, let’s say, two years, he’s been single-handedly preventing large-scale conflicts all around the globe, and – as he says in the film’s opening – there’s not a person alive who can go toe to toe with him on his best day. Of course, that means that in the interest of drama, it becomes the movie’s job to pull Tony down from that peak, so that his next ‘best day’ ends up being a long way off. Sure enough, it’s revealed right away that the chestpiece Tony built to keep the deadly shrapnel out of his heart is also slowly poisoning him, and any substantial change to its design would probably only kill him faster. It’s the one problem that Tony’s bravado and brainpower alone can’t solve, meaning if he wants to survive, he needs to give up the big-shot act and learn to accept help: from clandestine government agency S.H.I.E.L.D., from his best friend Rhodey, and even from his dead father. In turn, by learning to be more of a team player, it opens up the door for Tony to join the Avengers in his next appearance.

That’s how it works in theory, anyway. The finished product reads more as if the writers threw a bunch of stuff at the wall, saw what stuck, and then threw some more stuff for good measure. None of it is nearly as bad as you may have heard, but I have to admit that it isn’t quite cohesive. For instance, some scenes play around with ideas from the comics’ famous “Demon in a Bottle” storyline, which addressed Tony’s latent alcoholism, and they actually work really well, since at this point in the films, Tony is still the type of guy who would use his imminent death as an excuse to double down on self-destructive behavior. The issue is that none of Tony’s internal conflict – and I really mean none – continues into the second half of the movie. Instead, everything just kind of stops, stagnates for a bit, and then picks up again in an entirely different gear.

When Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D., abruptly arrives halfway through the film, there’s no real attempt made to orient the viewer as to who he is or why he’s there. He simply scolds Tony for being naughty, instantly negates the effects of his blood poisoning, drops some hints about an upcoming Thor movie, and takes off, leaving behind a box containing information to help Tony fix his chestpiece. It’s deus ex machina at its finest, literally placing the main character under house arrest until his problems are solved and he’s ready to fight the bad guys again. That kind of story might play fine in a comic book universe, where every detail has an in-depth origin hidden somewhere. But in a film franchise centered around one man, all the S.H.I.E.L.D. scenes do is rob Tony of his agency at a time that should have been a major turning point in the trilogy.

The second Iron Man is also troubled by the fact that its villain isn’t thematically connected to Tony’s arc the way Obie was, a development that’s especially frustrating because he totally could have been. Ivan Vanko is initially presented as a kind of Bizarro Tony Stark: he’s the son of Anton Vanko, a Russian physicist who helped Tony’s father Howard create his revolutionary arc reactor technology*. In Ivan’s mind, Howard unfairly took all the credit for his father’s design, and now he’s out for revenge. Howard Stark was a good man, but certainly had his flaws – the movies present him as equal parts Howard Hughes and Walt Disney – so it’s entirely possible that he could have screwed over a partner in the past. If he had, it would have given Ivan some sympathetic shading, and it could have been a motive for Tony to consider the repercussions of his own lone wolf mentality. But the film throws that out as well when Nick Fury says that no, actually, the Vanko family are a bunch of dicks, and they deserve every bad thing that happens to them. It’s all a bit of a waste, really.

 * In the comics, Anton Vanko was the name of the first Crimson Dynamo, the USSR's answer to Iron Man who was both one of Tony Stark's first foes and his eventual ally. Ivan is an original character created for the movie, but his supervillain persona Whiplash has been around for quite a while. 

Following Iron Man 2, we next see Tony in The Avengers. The main thing you need to know about that right now is that it ends with Iron Man flying a nuke through a wormhole into space to destroy an alien mothership, and then almost dying.

Spoiler Alert

When Tony finally gets a good look at that mothership, it’s a pretty powerful moment. You can jut feel his entire worldview crumbling around him. Not only is there so much more to the universe than he ever could have imagined, it turns out there are things out there he wouldn’t stand a chance against, even if it was his best day. Even during a moment of total victory, he realizes how insignificant he really is.

So hold that in your mind.

Iron Man 3 is probably the most controversial film in the MCU, at least from a comic-book purist’s perspective. I’m not a comic-book purist, and as I’ve said before, * my philosophy towards adaptation is, generally speaking, “do what you have to.” Even so, I do understand where the film’s detractors are coming from.

 * In Mike Overthinks Movies #5! 

The third Iron Man was advertised as the film that would finally pit Tony Stark against his long-time archnemesis from the comics, the Mandarin. As a warlord in possession of ten mystical rings of power, depictions of the character over the years had pinged back and forth from ‘magical, Chinese Lex Luthor’ to ‘borderline cultural stereotype.’ That’s why Iron Man 3’s Mandarin, presented as a ruthless, multi-national terrorist, was something to really get excited over. It’s also why fans were understandably upset when – seriously, Spoiler Alert – he turned out to be an actor hired by the real villain as part of his plan to monetize the war on terror. (I promise it all makes more sense than it seems to after the first viewing.)

It’s obvious why a twist like that would bother people. To put it very loosely, it was kind of like going to see The Dark Knight, only to have the Joker wipe off his makeup halfway through the movie and admit that he’s been taking orders from the Penny Plunderer the whole time.

Except not nearly as awesome as that would have been.

I was a little upset myself, until I sat down and thought about it for a while, at which point I realized that Iron Man 3 actually represents the epitome of the franchise’s main conflict. Both of the previous films featured businessmen willing to sell their potentially good technology to bad people for monetary reasons, but this one takes the idea to a whole new level by having its businessman actively create those bad people himself, for no other reason than to raise demand for the technology he’s selling. It’s the exact opposite of everything that Tony Stark – who’s spent years fighting to keep the Iron Man suit out of any hands but his own – stands for.

“But SuperMike,” you ask, “what about Tony’s internal struggle? Do the villains have some sort of thematic resonance with it?”

That’s a great question, reader, and as luck would have it, the villains this time around can claim the maximum number of bonus points in that regard. Iron Man 3 is very loosely based on the comics’ “Extremis” storyline, named after a specialized technovirus that uses nanomachines to give people superpowers. The film’s main villain, Aldrich Killian, is the creator of this virus, and he dreams of a world in which all people can be ‘upgraded’ and made better with these abilities. Conversely to that, we talked last week about how the true value of a superhero comes not from their power set, but from their personality, a concept that the film really takes to heart, even if it takes its hero a while to realize it.

See, following the events of The Avengers, Tony’s been having a bit of a hard time. The things he saw in that wormhole have really left their mark on him, giving him nightmares when he sleeps and panic attacks when he’s awake. The only time he feels truly secure anymore is when he’s in one of his suits, and as a result, he’s been making lots – and I mean lots – of suits. At the end of The Avengers, Tony is wearing his Mark VII armor. At the start of Iron Man 3, he’s working on the Mark XLII. That’s 36 new suits in about a year. He’s got one for every occasion, because he’s overtaken by need to be prepared for anything, and that focus has taken a toll on the other parts of his life. Naturally, then, as the rules of drama demand, Tony ends the film’s first act stranded in the middle of the country, far away from all his resources, with only a badly malfunctioning prototype for support. It would be a pretty bad situation for anyone, but for Tony at this point in his life, it’s a worst-case scenario. And yet, by being forced to act on his own, without excessive reliance on his suits, he’s able to let them go.

In fact, by the end of the movie, Tony makes a clean break from the past. He destroys every last one of his suits, and gets the shrapnel taken out of his chest while he’s at it. (I don’t know why he couldn’t have done that in the first place, but whatever.) He knows now that he doesn’t need the suits to do right by those close to him, or even to be a hero in the first place. It’s an unorthodox ending that values catharsis and emotional truth over a continuing franchise, and I have to give the writers a tremendous amount of credit for going with it. It’s also notable for being the polar opposite of the end of the Extremis story in the comics, in which Tony not only keeps and powers up his suit, but actually gets a new one that is completely synthesized with his body and stored in the hollow spaces of his bones.

Which is weird.

So what’s next for Tony Stark? I can’t say for sure, but considering all the bragging I did last week about my screenplay, I can at least guess.

What If?

Gun to my head, I don’t think Tony’s retirement is going to be anything close to permanent. I do think he was serious about trying to keep out of the suits for a while, but his hero complex isn’t going to let him sit around and do nothing, if only because Robert Downey Jr. is still under contract for two more films with Marvel. Concept art for the next of those films, Avengers: Age of Ultron, shows the Hulk doing battle with Stark’s specialty Hulkbuster armor, and while it’s true that that armor is specially designed to fight the Hulk, Mr. Green can still pack a punch. I wouldn’t be surprised if that little skirmish is the straw that breaks the camel’s back – or Tony’s back, for that matter. If he can’t go into the field himself, Tony may then focus his efforts on improving the remote functionality that the suits in IM3 showed off, turning them into fully autonomous drone pilots. When you factor in the fact that the Ultron of the movie’s title is a killer robot powered by a rogue A.I., I for one think my odds of being close to right on that are pretty good.

A more out-there but still plausible prediction is that Tony might actually die over the course of Avengers 2. After all, the other film he’s on contract for, Avengers 3, doesn’t come out until 2018, so with all that missing time in between, he could very well just appear in flashbacks or as a recording. More importantly, killing him off would indicate a lot of confidence on the studio’s part, sending a message to viewers that their success isn’t based on star power alone.

Plus, Joss Whedon’s writing it, and that dude kills beloved characters like a kid stomps on ants.

 Next Week: You’ll believe a man can Smash!