Even if
we’re only counting the six Avengers from the first movie, Tony is probably my
fourth or fifth favorite. However,
that’s a testament to how much I love Cap, Black Widow, and Thor, not any knock
against Tony. He’s a
highly-entertaining, integral part of the team, and the MCU might not have the
huge franchise it does today if the first Iron
Man hadn’t been so good (Tony-related spoilers.)
Tony
made a great jumping-off character for the franchise, and not just because
Marvel was able to cast Robert Downey Jr.
He’s an engaging character with a strong origin story that’s more of a
personal journey than an acquisition of powers.
Seeing the beginnings of non-powered heroes can be interesting because,
while superhuman abilities are often acquired unintentionally (like Spider-Man or
Daredevil) or differently than expected (like the Hulk,) someone without powers
who sets out to do the work of a superhero makes a clear choice that they
really don’t have to make. (Yes, powered
people obviously have a choice as well, but with superpowers, you kind of have to address what you’re going to do with
them. The rest of us have no such
necessity.) As such, Iron Man’s origins
are about how Tony becomes the man who makes the choice he does.
Granted,
that choice initially comes about because of something unexpectedly thrust upon
him: being struck by the shrapnel of one
of his own bombs and held captive by terrorists. Tony’s injuries lead him to make the arc
reactor, and making the first prototype of the suit allows him to escape his
captors, but that’s not precisely what leads the self-absorbed genius
inventor/playboy billionaire to put his life on the line for others. He’s horrified
to learn that his weapons have wound up in the wrong hands – among
returning home, he shuts down Stark Industries’ arms division, and his first
mission in the revamped suit is a plan to take out the terrorists who’ve
benefited from his company’s dirty dealings.
Even though he himself wasn’t involved in selling weapons to terrorists,
the fact that he designed them makes him feel responsible, and he can’t let it
stand without trying to make it right.
Tony
can come off as cavalier and flippant – and to be sure, he has refined his sarcasm to an art – but really, so many of his
major decisions are fueled by emotional reactions to what happens to him. Facing up to his own mortality has, at
different points in the franchise, sent him on self-destructive spirals and led
him to obsessively make better and badder suits in an unending quest for
invulnerability. In Age of Ultron, all the Avengers are affected by the Scarlet Witch’s
mental manipulation, but the fears she reveals within Tony lead him to create
Ultron, a misguided attempt to keep the whole world safe that backfires
spectacularly. And in turn, it’s the
Ultron disaster that causes Tony to support the Sokovia Accords in Captain America: Civil War, almost a complete 180 from his
typical “it’s up to me to fix everything” MO (although he’s still convinced
that he’s the one in the right – Tony
will be Tony.) In this way, he can feel
inconsistent, because his reactions are often so extreme and can contradict
each other from movie to movie, but I see why he does the things he does. Tony is a guy who’s so driven to help and so sure
that he can that he never does anything by half measures. He always throws everything into a plan or an
invention, which means he frequently takes it too far, and each course
correction leaves him a little further off the mark. It’s hard to know if he’ll ever get the
balance just right; personally, I hope not, because that would probably mean
his journey was over.
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