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May. 30th, 2020 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_gendermanHow the MCU ruined their Cash Cow (aka Iron Man).
Iron Man's an original Avenger. He's the movie that kicked off the whole MCU as a phenomenon. He's definitely got a place in the franchise, but at the same time, that place should have been well-defined enough to let other characters have their place to be themselves and to grow. How many times did they have him "retire," only to show back up again in the next movie?
First, how many movies was he in? Well, Iron Man 1, 2, and 3. All four Avengers ensemble movies. Captain America: Civil War. Both MCU Spider-Man movies. Did he belong in all of those movies? No.
I'm gonna put this under a read-more cut (assuming I can figure out how) since it's getting long.
Obviously, he was the (anti)hero of his own trilogy. He's got a character arc. He's still an egotistical rich guy who's never been told no throughout his trilogy, but he does seem to learn. At least a little. He goes from party-asshole who doesn't listen to anyone, to deciding maybe just cruising by on his family name isn't good enough for him, he's gotta be better than that. He's gonna do some good for the world. He confronts his mortality, does the Stark Expo with the intention of promoting science and research and funding. He makes the big Arc Reactor (in Avengers, which we're gonna shove into the middle of his trilogy because it's also part of his character arc) and tries to be an actual Good Guy. Then he has to deal with his PTSD (not that the movie did a great job of showing how he's dealing with it, just that he has it, which is more than the franchise can say for its other characters) and take a good hard look at himself and what he's doing to the people he loves. And so he retires for the first time.
It's neat and tidy and has a proper end. And, ok, the reemergence of HYDRA in Captain America: Winter Soldier does force his unretirement into Avengers: Age of Ultron, but we can give that bit a pass. He's still riding high on the "becoming a better person for the people he loves" wave and if that means fighting HYDRA, then he's gonna fight HYDRA. He'll retire when he's done. Except that, Tony being Tony, the writers or directors or whoever was in charge, decided to leave him, at heart, a deeply egotistical character. He believes that he is necessary for the world to be safe. Maybe others can help out, but they can't do it without his brain, his expertise. So after taking down HYDRA, instead of retiring again (which, maybe he was thinking about when he set Ultron into motion? A way that he could retire from active duty as Iron Man but still have a hand in everything?)
But why did they have to leave him like that? I mean, maybe it's not realistic that someone as sheltered and privileged as Tony Stark, billionaire playboy, could grow a conscience that quickly, but these are superhero movies. As people who know the comics better than I do have said, comics Ultron was built by Hank Pym. Maybe it was an odd choice to go with the Age of Ultron story when the main guy responsible for Ultron hadn't been introduced yet, but eh, whatever. Tony Stark, amiright? He's a stubborn, egotistical genius, let's have him build Ultron. And maybe it even makes a little bit of sense. It both does and does not fit with his character arc. Yeah, Tony doesn't like listening to other people and will do whatever the hell he wants no matter who asks him not to. Except that by the end of Iron Man 3, he was actually beginning to self reflect a little. So, ok, Whedon keeps Tony as ego-Tony who does whatever he wants. And builds a murder-robot. And then he retires again and conveniently wriggles out of having to take any responsibility for having created Ultron.
Which brings us toCaptain America Avengers: Civil War. Let's be fair, that was a Captain America movie in name only. If it was truly a Captain America movie, there wouldn't be any argument over "who was right, Steve or Tony?" of course it would be Steve, if it was in fact his movie. But they decided to have the Captain America trilogy end with what was essentially an Avengers ensemble film. Why did they go with Civil War over Serpent Society? I dunno, probably money. Get a bunch of stars in the same movie, hype it up, play up the internal conflict, draw crowds. Iron Man's the face of the franchise, the first film, the big star. Gotta work him in somehow So. Civil War gives us Tony-- sorry, scratch that, The Avengers being held responsible for Ultron. Tony's retired, he can just sit back and pretend to play along with Ross because he's Tony Stark, billionaire playboy egotist. Who never learns or grows or is held accountable for what he does. (Ross is an asshole, probably a villain, and probably also using the Accords for his own gain, but that's another story entirely.) It's a guaranteed moneymaker, he's a rebel! He's what 'Muricans want to be, yeah? So the Sokovia Accords happen and he has a twinge of guilt because he was forced to face what he did, that yes, his actions had consequences. So, having been reverted to pre-Iron Man 3 (probably even pre-Avengers) Tony Stark, he immediately blames everyone else along with him. The Avengers were in Sokovia, of course they need to be held responsible with him, never mind they never would've been in Sokovia if he hadn't twisted Bruce's arm and stolen Loki's scepter to fool around when everyone else was busy celebrating the end of HYDRA. The Hulk catapulted himself off-planet at the end of Age of Ultron, so he's not there to explain what Tony did or try to talk to him as a friend. Rhodey's too busy dealing with the Accords and his military liaison position (I'm imagining he's trying to keep Ross's hands off the Avengers as best he can while working within the bounds of the Accords because, as the movie said, after Sokovia, the world did not have a very positive view of the Avengers right then).
So. Civil War. Tony cannot be the "good guy" in this movie, not just because it's supposed to be a Captain America movie, but because he's all rah rah, Sokovia Accords, "we need to be put in check," and then promptly ignores everything he claims the Avengers need. Because they need it, not him. He's Iron Man 2 (when he thought he was dying, therefore he wound't have to face consequences, except that here he's perfectly alive and well) egotistical Tony Stark who knows better than everyone else. He lives in the moment except when it's convenient for him not to. Tony flaunts Ross at every opportunity, whenever the rules he forced everyone else to live by, are no longer convenient to him. And maybe he does come to see that Ross is wrong when he refuses to look into the fake doctor, but also, Tony, you did this by signing and then refusing to abide. Ross doesn't trust you? Well, of course he doesn't. You've given him no reason to trust you.
Also, how long had he been watching Peter Parker to be able to swoop in at a moment's notice to blackmail him into joining the fight? Which, there's so much wrong there. Tony rolls in in his flash car, butters up Aunt May with talk about a scholarship just so he can get Peter alone to threaten him. Oh yes, threaten. Peter wants to do the right thing, being Spider-Man and helping his fellow New Yorkers, but he's worried about his aunt finding out. So what does Tony do? Tells him, unless he comes to Germany with him, he'll rat him out. Peter's, what, fifteen? Tony is forty-six in Civil War. He's rich and famous and has a lot of influence, and knows what buttons to press to get a teenager to go to Germany illegally with him. Sure, Ross told Tony he had time to figure things out, but that certainly didn't involve pulling in a super-powered teenager who's probably never heard of the Accords that he is now in direct violation of. What did Tony tell Peter about the reasons why they were going to Germany? Just that Captain America needed to be stopped? He certainly couldn't have told him the truth, or else Peter wouldn't have continued to see him as such a hero figure (well, that and the agenda of de-working class'ing Spider-Man).
Which brings us to Spider-Man: Homecoming. Where Tony claimed that he loved Peter like his own son. Except that he promptly abandoned him as soon as he got bored like an Easter present duckling dumped at the local pond despite the fact that it's imprinted on him. Peter hero-worships Tony. Tony sees Peter as just another toy. He fobbed Peter off on Happy (who is stunningly incompetent and not so much comic relief as secondhand embarrassment and he has to have some kind of blackmail on Tony to still be employed in such important positions after everything he has shown himself unable to do) and fucked off to wherever he went. Never even check to make sure everything was fine. And if he did, well, Happy didn't want to play ducking-sitter, so he ignored every text Peter sent him, didn't give him a second thought, and if Tony asked him how Peter was, I'm sure he lied and said he was fine. So Peter's waited and waited for missions or anything from Tony, and then when something did come up, he decided to do something about it, because that's what he does. And then things went sour because he tried to take on more than he was probably ready to do, because Tony hyped him up and convinced him he was basically an Avenger when he was just a teenager with a good heart, but a bad case of hero-worship. And Tony sent an empty suit to tell him to leave things alone, Peter tried to tell him something was up, and Tony just went "Howard" mode and pushed him aside. And maybe it wouldn't have been a good idea to tell a 15-year-old that there were FBI plans to catch the guys he was following, but at the same time, Tony damn well should have known Peter wasn't going to take a plain no for an answer, not with how everything had gone so far. And blah blah blah, the ferry fight and things are way more difficult than Peter can handle, but he thought he was the only one paying attention, the only one who could do anything, and Tony "grounds" him. Because this is the most attention Tony has given this kid, his supposed protege, his stand-in-son, in months. Tony's trying to be a better father-figure than Howard? He sure does have a funny way to showing it, turning into exactly the absent father(-figure) who only shows up to tell his son that he's smarter than this. Build him up and then abandon him after he's reached an "I can do anything!" stage of childhood. So, Tony has not only regressed to Iron Man 1, but he's turning into every bit of his father that he swore he never would.
Infinity War. Heck, I don't really remember what happened in this movie, other than it was all Tony, all the time, and he kind of resents Steve for not having called him, despite having been given the phone and the letter and the "you can call me whenever you need me, whenever you're ready" from him. Steve didn't call him because he was giving Tony time to be ready. Tony didn't call him because he was sulking.
Endgame was a total mess. Tony's retired again, and when the Avengers finally figure out a way to go back five years and make the Snap never happen, he refuses to do it because he has a kid now. And sure, maybe he loves this kid, but wasn't Peter "his kid" too? If he goes back five years, they take care of Thanos then and there (ignoring Doctor Strange's prediction that they only win in one scenario, the writers could very easily have made that the scenario) and saved Peter and have gone on to marry Pepper again and have Morgan again. Everyone else was willing to give up whatever lives they had lived during those five years. But no, Tony couldn't do that, he got his dream life, retired in a cabin in the woods with a kid and no responsibilities. Just another middle aged rich white man who's never been told no in his life. Despite all the previous movies where he had been told no and never learned from it, or actively regressed. He gets to dictate the entire everything, goes back in time, meets his father, and then forgives him? for being a terrible absent father? because he learned that Howard was nervous about having a kid and now Tony understands because he has a kid of his own? Sounds fake, but ok.
And then, in the end, Tony gets to be the hero. He dies defeating Thanos and everyone at his funeral is very sad and loved him very much. Even Bucky, apparently. Whom he never apologized to, never even talked to. The last thing Bucky saw of Tony was Tony trying to murder him (I don't recall Tony having even hard words to Clint after he got brainwashed and definitely killed people for Loki, or when Clint killed people without being brainwashed, but Tony is Special because it was his mom), Tony's boot to his face, and then Tony telling Steve he didn't deserve the shield. And he's supposed to be like "It's all cool, he got Thanos, that makes it all ok now"?
So, Tony's dead, but he's still showing up in movies he has no place in. Spider-Man: Far From Home was a mess, even more-so than Homecoming. We learn that Tony built a massive swarm of murder-satellites, quite capable of exactly what Project Insight was planning to do, except in conveniently small packages on a hair-trigger. Were we supposed to laugh at the part of Far from Home where Peter gets jealous of a classmate because he's still very much a teenager, and EDITH is like "that's cool, activating murder drones" and it takes way more to stop the drones than to launch them in the first place. Tony's character has not just regressed, but been completely obliterated. He has no moral standing, and yet we're being told he's the biggest of big heroes because he sacrificed himself to get everyone back in the Blip. Far from Home's Tony Stark is profoundly immoral. Not just amoral. No one has said anything about the Accords, if they've been repealed or not, so we can only assume they're still in place after the Snap and the Blip, and Tony ignored them completely to build his murder-drone network because he could, and didn't put any basic safeguards on it at all. If they wanted to keep the basic plot, Far from Home should have been Peter learning to find himself again, learning how to be a hero on his own, without Tony's input at all. He can still be sad that his hero (I won't say mentor) died, and still not want to be the guy Skrull!Fury wants him to be, without Tony's murder-drones or Tony's aggrieved former employee. Or Happy suddenly feeling like he has to take care of his deceased employer's lost duckling who he never showed any signs of caring about before.
And the worst part? All of this is canon-compliant. But that sweet, sweet ticket money meant the more movies they throw Iron Man into, the more cash they make, never mind consistency. They can turn Tony Stark from a flawed hero who untimately means well into a monster and tell us, on-screen, that he's a hero, therefore everything is fine.
Iron Man's an original Avenger. He's the movie that kicked off the whole MCU as a phenomenon. He's definitely got a place in the franchise, but at the same time, that place should have been well-defined enough to let other characters have their place to be themselves and to grow. How many times did they have him "retire," only to show back up again in the next movie?
First, how many movies was he in? Well, Iron Man 1, 2, and 3. All four Avengers ensemble movies. Captain America: Civil War. Both MCU Spider-Man movies. Did he belong in all of those movies? No.
I'm gonna put this under a read-more cut (assuming I can figure out how) since it's getting long.
Obviously, he was the (anti)hero of his own trilogy. He's got a character arc. He's still an egotistical rich guy who's never been told no throughout his trilogy, but he does seem to learn. At least a little. He goes from party-asshole who doesn't listen to anyone, to deciding maybe just cruising by on his family name isn't good enough for him, he's gotta be better than that. He's gonna do some good for the world. He confronts his mortality, does the Stark Expo with the intention of promoting science and research and funding. He makes the big Arc Reactor (in Avengers, which we're gonna shove into the middle of his trilogy because it's also part of his character arc) and tries to be an actual Good Guy. Then he has to deal with his PTSD (not that the movie did a great job of showing how he's dealing with it, just that he has it, which is more than the franchise can say for its other characters) and take a good hard look at himself and what he's doing to the people he loves. And so he retires for the first time.
It's neat and tidy and has a proper end. And, ok, the reemergence of HYDRA in Captain America: Winter Soldier does force his unretirement into Avengers: Age of Ultron, but we can give that bit a pass. He's still riding high on the "becoming a better person for the people he loves" wave and if that means fighting HYDRA, then he's gonna fight HYDRA. He'll retire when he's done. Except that, Tony being Tony, the writers or directors or whoever was in charge, decided to leave him, at heart, a deeply egotistical character. He believes that he is necessary for the world to be safe. Maybe others can help out, but they can't do it without his brain, his expertise. So after taking down HYDRA, instead of retiring again (which, maybe he was thinking about when he set Ultron into motion? A way that he could retire from active duty as Iron Man but still have a hand in everything?)
But why did they have to leave him like that? I mean, maybe it's not realistic that someone as sheltered and privileged as Tony Stark, billionaire playboy, could grow a conscience that quickly, but these are superhero movies. As people who know the comics better than I do have said, comics Ultron was built by Hank Pym. Maybe it was an odd choice to go with the Age of Ultron story when the main guy responsible for Ultron hadn't been introduced yet, but eh, whatever. Tony Stark, amiright? He's a stubborn, egotistical genius, let's have him build Ultron. And maybe it even makes a little bit of sense. It both does and does not fit with his character arc. Yeah, Tony doesn't like listening to other people and will do whatever the hell he wants no matter who asks him not to. Except that by the end of Iron Man 3, he was actually beginning to self reflect a little. So, ok, Whedon keeps Tony as ego-Tony who does whatever he wants. And builds a murder-robot. And then he retires again and conveniently wriggles out of having to take any responsibility for having created Ultron.
Which brings us to
So. Civil War. Tony cannot be the "good guy" in this movie, not just because it's supposed to be a Captain America movie, but because he's all rah rah, Sokovia Accords, "we need to be put in check," and then promptly ignores everything he claims the Avengers need. Because they need it, not him. He's Iron Man 2 (when he thought he was dying, therefore he wound't have to face consequences, except that here he's perfectly alive and well) egotistical Tony Stark who knows better than everyone else. He lives in the moment except when it's convenient for him not to. Tony flaunts Ross at every opportunity, whenever the rules he forced everyone else to live by, are no longer convenient to him. And maybe he does come to see that Ross is wrong when he refuses to look into the fake doctor, but also, Tony, you did this by signing and then refusing to abide. Ross doesn't trust you? Well, of course he doesn't. You've given him no reason to trust you.
Also, how long had he been watching Peter Parker to be able to swoop in at a moment's notice to blackmail him into joining the fight? Which, there's so much wrong there. Tony rolls in in his flash car, butters up Aunt May with talk about a scholarship just so he can get Peter alone to threaten him. Oh yes, threaten. Peter wants to do the right thing, being Spider-Man and helping his fellow New Yorkers, but he's worried about his aunt finding out. So what does Tony do? Tells him, unless he comes to Germany with him, he'll rat him out. Peter's, what, fifteen? Tony is forty-six in Civil War. He's rich and famous and has a lot of influence, and knows what buttons to press to get a teenager to go to Germany illegally with him. Sure, Ross told Tony he had time to figure things out, but that certainly didn't involve pulling in a super-powered teenager who's probably never heard of the Accords that he is now in direct violation of. What did Tony tell Peter about the reasons why they were going to Germany? Just that Captain America needed to be stopped? He certainly couldn't have told him the truth, or else Peter wouldn't have continued to see him as such a hero figure (well, that and the agenda of de-working class'ing Spider-Man).
Which brings us to Spider-Man: Homecoming. Where Tony claimed that he loved Peter like his own son. Except that he promptly abandoned him as soon as he got bored like an Easter present duckling dumped at the local pond despite the fact that it's imprinted on him. Peter hero-worships Tony. Tony sees Peter as just another toy. He fobbed Peter off on Happy (who is stunningly incompetent and not so much comic relief as secondhand embarrassment and he has to have some kind of blackmail on Tony to still be employed in such important positions after everything he has shown himself unable to do) and fucked off to wherever he went. Never even check to make sure everything was fine. And if he did, well, Happy didn't want to play ducking-sitter, so he ignored every text Peter sent him, didn't give him a second thought, and if Tony asked him how Peter was, I'm sure he lied and said he was fine. So Peter's waited and waited for missions or anything from Tony, and then when something did come up, he decided to do something about it, because that's what he does. And then things went sour because he tried to take on more than he was probably ready to do, because Tony hyped him up and convinced him he was basically an Avenger when he was just a teenager with a good heart, but a bad case of hero-worship. And Tony sent an empty suit to tell him to leave things alone, Peter tried to tell him something was up, and Tony just went "Howard" mode and pushed him aside. And maybe it wouldn't have been a good idea to tell a 15-year-old that there were FBI plans to catch the guys he was following, but at the same time, Tony damn well should have known Peter wasn't going to take a plain no for an answer, not with how everything had gone so far. And blah blah blah, the ferry fight and things are way more difficult than Peter can handle, but he thought he was the only one paying attention, the only one who could do anything, and Tony "grounds" him. Because this is the most attention Tony has given this kid, his supposed protege, his stand-in-son, in months. Tony's trying to be a better father-figure than Howard? He sure does have a funny way to showing it, turning into exactly the absent father(-figure) who only shows up to tell his son that he's smarter than this. Build him up and then abandon him after he's reached an "I can do anything!" stage of childhood. So, Tony has not only regressed to Iron Man 1, but he's turning into every bit of his father that he swore he never would.
Infinity War. Heck, I don't really remember what happened in this movie, other than it was all Tony, all the time, and he kind of resents Steve for not having called him, despite having been given the phone and the letter and the "you can call me whenever you need me, whenever you're ready" from him. Steve didn't call him because he was giving Tony time to be ready. Tony didn't call him because he was sulking.
Endgame was a total mess. Tony's retired again, and when the Avengers finally figure out a way to go back five years and make the Snap never happen, he refuses to do it because he has a kid now. And sure, maybe he loves this kid, but wasn't Peter "his kid" too? If he goes back five years, they take care of Thanos then and there (ignoring Doctor Strange's prediction that they only win in one scenario, the writers could very easily have made that the scenario) and saved Peter and have gone on to marry Pepper again and have Morgan again. Everyone else was willing to give up whatever lives they had lived during those five years. But no, Tony couldn't do that, he got his dream life, retired in a cabin in the woods with a kid and no responsibilities. Just another middle aged rich white man who's never been told no in his life. Despite all the previous movies where he had been told no and never learned from it, or actively regressed. He gets to dictate the entire everything, goes back in time, meets his father, and then forgives him? for being a terrible absent father? because he learned that Howard was nervous about having a kid and now Tony understands because he has a kid of his own? Sounds fake, but ok.
And then, in the end, Tony gets to be the hero. He dies defeating Thanos and everyone at his funeral is very sad and loved him very much. Even Bucky, apparently. Whom he never apologized to, never even talked to. The last thing Bucky saw of Tony was Tony trying to murder him (I don't recall Tony having even hard words to Clint after he got brainwashed and definitely killed people for Loki, or when Clint killed people without being brainwashed, but Tony is Special because it was his mom), Tony's boot to his face, and then Tony telling Steve he didn't deserve the shield. And he's supposed to be like "It's all cool, he got Thanos, that makes it all ok now"?
So, Tony's dead, but he's still showing up in movies he has no place in. Spider-Man: Far From Home was a mess, even more-so than Homecoming. We learn that Tony built a massive swarm of murder-satellites, quite capable of exactly what Project Insight was planning to do, except in conveniently small packages on a hair-trigger. Were we supposed to laugh at the part of Far from Home where Peter gets jealous of a classmate because he's still very much a teenager, and EDITH is like "that's cool, activating murder drones" and it takes way more to stop the drones than to launch them in the first place. Tony's character has not just regressed, but been completely obliterated. He has no moral standing, and yet we're being told he's the biggest of big heroes because he sacrificed himself to get everyone back in the Blip. Far from Home's Tony Stark is profoundly immoral. Not just amoral. No one has said anything about the Accords, if they've been repealed or not, so we can only assume they're still in place after the Snap and the Blip, and Tony ignored them completely to build his murder-drone network because he could, and didn't put any basic safeguards on it at all. If they wanted to keep the basic plot, Far from Home should have been Peter learning to find himself again, learning how to be a hero on his own, without Tony's input at all. He can still be sad that his hero (I won't say mentor) died, and still not want to be the guy Skrull!Fury wants him to be, without Tony's murder-drones or Tony's aggrieved former employee. Or Happy suddenly feeling like he has to take care of his deceased employer's lost duckling who he never showed any signs of caring about before.
And the worst part? All of this is canon-compliant. But that sweet, sweet ticket money meant the more movies they throw Iron Man into, the more cash they make, never mind consistency. They can turn Tony Stark from a flawed hero who untimately means well into a monster and tell us, on-screen, that he's a hero, therefore everything is fine.
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Date: 2020-05-31 01:05 am (UTC)It feels like the powers that be are gaslighting us (or attempting to).
I wasn't really affected by Tony's demise in Endgame. By that point, I didn't care, because they ruined him for me in Civil War.
Great meta, thanks for sharing!