Well this is late...anyway I'll just preface this with there will be no spoilers for
Captain America: Civil War in this piece, and my review of the film will come soon enough.
Now that we've examined the Star Spangled Man with A Plan (If you haven't read
part one yet, please do so), let's take a look at the cinematic journey of genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist, Tony Stark aka Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.)
When Tony is still in captivity of the Ten Rings in the first
Iron Man, Yensin (Shaun Toub) asks him if he has a family, to which Tony says no. Yensin replies, "So you are a man who has everything and nothing." How true is that. The Tony that we're looking at right now lives an empty life of drinking, partying, and sleeping around. He gets no real fulfillment from any of this. There's something seriously missing from his life.
Later on in the film, after Tony escapes (and Yensin tells him not to waste his life), he's speaking to Pepper (Gwyneth Palytrow) about his current path. She disapproves, but Tony tells her, "I just finally know what I have to do…and I know in my heart, that it's right." Tony knows that Yensin was right. He has wasted his life. The weapons manufacturing has done its good work, but its also done its damage, and now he's seen that first hand. It's time for Tony to add something positive to the world.
Now we have a humble Tony, with a better understanding of his purpose, and what he can do with his life.
While he may be humbler, it's still very much all about him. Old habits die hard. Even at the end of the film, he goes for an extra bit of glory declaring to the press, "I am Iron Man." In the post credits scene, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) tells Tony "You've become a part of a bigger universe, you just don't know it yet." He would soon learn how right Fury was, the hard way...more on that later.
Iron Man 2 opens with Tony facing death once more. The core of the arc reactor in his chest is slowly poisoning him. In times of near death, the question of one's legacy arises, and Tony begins to deal with his own.
At this point in his life, his legacy is Iron Man. The weapons manufacturing, that's a thing of the past. Now, the government is fighting him to turn over the Iron Man technology, which is both his legacy and identity. Unfortunately, the government does get their hands on the suit, which leaves Tony down in the dumps…or rather, up in a giant donut nursing a hangover.
The film also turns a spotlight on Tony's relationship with his father, Howard Stark (John Slattery/Dominic Cooper). The legacy of a parent often transcends the legacy of a child (In a literal sense, Tony did take over his father's company at the young age of twenty-one). Then when we learn Tony and Howard's relationship was cold and distant, you start to wonder, did Tony ever want the life of Stark Industries? Was weapons manufacturing ever really what he wanted to do? It would make sense if this life felt empty too him, and it never felt what he was meant to do.
As Fury tells him though, Howard had bigger plans for Tony. Plans that extended beyond taking over the company, but finishing his life's work. Howard had a grander design for the arc reactor technology, but his plans were far ahead of the science of his time. Therefore, as we learn in a recorded message from long ago, Howard would leave the rest of his plans to his son.
Howard trusted that his only son could be the one to accomplish this. He had all the faith in Tony, as he tells him "My greatest creation, will always be you." Armed with this newfound knowledge and affection from his father, Tony is able to create a new element to power the arc reactor, and therefore save his own life again. The part of his legacy he inherited from his father, has directly reinvigorated the part of his legacy from Iron Man. That brings a greater emotional weight to what Tony does with the Iron Man technology. This is his work, and no politician can take that away from him.
Now if you recall, Tony's father Howard got a little close with a certain super soldier back in the day. Of course I'm talking about Steve Rogers, Captain America (Chris Evans). In
The Avengers, Tony finally gets to meet the man his father spoke so highly of in his youth. Naturally, they don't get along too well. Steve is a team-player and plays by the book, Tony does what he wants and breaks the rules if he has to. Polar opposites in a way.
One could look at Tony's relationship with Steve as like a jealous, sibling rivalry type deal. Steve being the older brother Howard always idolized, while Tony never meeting his father's expectations in his youth. Now he finally meets this "symbolic big-brother" and is like "What the hell this guy's a square. I'm better than this."
Steve strikes a chord with Tony later on in the film. He calls Tony out, tells him he's no more than the suit of armor he parades around in (Now that suit's become pretty important to him at this point in the films. I'm sure that hurts.) and that "the only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play…" Tony after all is a bit self-absorbed, and does have a narcissist streak. Hey the SHIELD files said so. Tony knows he doesn't play well with others. But when you think about it, when he hears Captain America himself saying this stuff, might that not hit a little harder? Isn't it easier to admit your own flaws to yourself than to someone else, much less this American icon your father always regarded so highly?
Anyway in the climatic battle of
The Avengers Tony defies expectations and makes the ultimate sacrifice, when he carries the nuclear missile through the wormhole and out of the galaxy, nearly losing his life. Here is where Tony contradicts Steve's views of him. He risks his own life, and becomes a part of something bigger. He finally sees that he's part of that universe Nick Fury was talking about…and that scares him.
It should come as no surprise that Tony is portrayed as a victim of PTSD. Not just from his experience of being captured by terrorists, but by flying through a wormhole to another galaxy, facing possible death for the near-hundredth time. This is the Tony we see in
Iron Man 3. When we ended
The Avengers, he was on Mock 7 of the Iron Man suit. Now only a year or so later, he's on Mock 42. Wow. That's a lot of suit building.
All these different suits have different features for multiple scenarios…or multiple threats. This is a coping mechanism. He explains to Pepper, "Gods, aliens, other dimensions…I'm just a man in a can." and that he can't sleep, because he's in constant fear of danger. "Just a man in a can…" isn't that sort of a callback to Steve's "big man in a suit of armor" remark? Hmm...
He tells Pepper his suits are a part of him, she argues they're just distractions. The only way Tony has survived so far is because of the technology he's created with Iron Man. So in a dark sort of way, he's building all these machines so he can in fact protect himself and the people he cares about from the likes of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Chiutari, etc.
The part of Tony's legacy, where he is Iron Man, has become convoluted in his mind. He believes without the suit or armor, he is nothing. The suit is what makes the man, but by the end of
Iron Man 3, he realizes that man makes the suit. For most of
Iron Man 3, Tony is fighting the bad guys and saving the day with only small bits of his tech. He only really suits up once or twice in the film. In the closing moments, Tony has the arc reactor removed from his chest, and all his suits are destroyed.
He narrates that his armor "was never a distraction, or a hobby, it was a cocoon. Now, I'm a changed man. You can take away my house, all my tricks and toys. One thing you can't take away…I am Iron Man." He has come to a better understanding of his own legacy. Like he has said many times before, he is Iron Man. Not because of the suit, but what he does with it.
Regardless, Tony still suffers from PTSD, and that is not something that is easily cured. Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) brings his fears and anxieties back to the surface in the opening moments of
Avengers: Age of Ultron. She shows him a vision of the world under siege of the Chiutari once more, and his fellow Avengers have fallen. In this vision, Steve tells Tony with his final breath, "You could have saved us…why didn't you do more?" The threats that plagued Tony in
Iron Man 3 still plague him now, and he feels he has not done enough to protect the world. So…he takes Loki's scepter, and he creates Ultron (James Spader).
We all know that ends spectacularly, right? Even the best intentions can go astray, and Tony does in fact have the best intentions. He fights with Steve at the Barton Farmhouse, that everything he did in creating Ultron was to stop the world's need for The Avengers, "Isn't that the why we fight? So we can end the fight, and go home?" Tony wants it to stop. He wants the world to be safe, and he's slowly come to the realization that this act as Iron Man can't do it. That's why he built Ultron, the Iron Legion, and all those suits. He knows he is not enough, and continuing to fight like he is enough has taken its toll on his mind and body.
So what is enough, you ask? Well, perhaps a system of accords that keeps super powered people in check, that prevents them from causing anymore damage than they need to get the job done? Enter
Captain America: Civil War, where Tony is once again trying to make the world a safer place. He's trying to do good, after his work as Iron Man, his work with Ultron, has proved to only cause as much bad as good.
Now I'd love to further this analysis through
Captain America: Civil War, but that's another piece for another day, and I'd like to write my review on it first. To conclude, we now see where both Captain America and Iron Man have come from. Two sides of the same coin, in some ways. One fighting his whole life to find a sense of belonging, purpose. The other desperate to right the wrongs of the past, and leave a worthy mark on the world. Good men, trying to be better…just in different ways. United they stand. Divided they fall...
