Anghus Houvouras on whether it’s time for a new Iron Man…
Sometimes an actor is so perfectly suited for a role you can’t even imagine anyone else in the part. That was certainly the case when we first saw Robert Downey Jr. playing Tony Stark in Marvel’s Iron Man. He had the suave, debonair, devil-may-care attitude and the kind of real life demons that gave Stark the potential for an epic dark side. I doubt there’s a lot of people who watched Iron Man and thought that Marvel hadn’t hit a home run with both the film and their choice to launch their long-awaited Cinematic Universe.
The second Iron Man was an absolutely awful follow-up. A movie that got so much wrong with the same creative team that you began to wonder if the success of the original was little more than dumb luck. Downey continued to play Stark as a playboy dealing with turmoil. The original movie saw his turmoil manifest in the form of a stark realization: his company was causing the countless deaths of innocent people and he needed to make it right. The second film went with a significantly lazier route: Daddy issues and death with a resolution that managed to solve both issues in one fell swoop. Downey had to carry Iron Man 2 which meant a healthy dose of swagger and snark.
With two Iron Man films under his belt, Downey had turned Stark into an amusing tortured genius prone to pithy one liners. A personality type perfectly suited for Joss Whedon who let Downey soft-shoe through the Avengers making cracks like he was hosting the Comedy Central Roast of the Marvel Universe. His one-note shtick was already starting to get old, but we were to buy freaking out over seeing the vast majority of our favorite Marvel superheroes teaming up for the first time. The seams are easier to spot in subsequent viewings. Those grating one liners like Stark joking to Loki about ‘performance issues’ when Loki tries to hypnotize him with his magical staff are just as painful as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pun-tastic Mr. Freeze from Batman & Robin.
The Iron Man of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a one-note character the entire time, relying on the charm of the actor portraying him to fill in the gaping non-existent character traits provided in the script. If we’re being honest, I think it’s time for Tony Stark to take a sabbatical and let someone else become Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’ll explain.
Marvel has had two long-term problems with Iron Man. The first is a problem plaguing all the Marvel films: uninteresting villains. Without a proper rogues gallery, Iron Man has continued to face the same kind of villain in each film. The emotional connection to Obadiah Stane in the original was the closest thing we had to any real gravitas. The villains of Iron Man 2 and Iron Man 3 were forgettable cardboard cutouts. Loki was the closest thing he’s had to a real villain, and they barely had more than a few moments of screen time together.
Ultron was the opportunity to give Stark a real villain. An Omega to his Alpha. A horrific world conquering abomination that he helped create. Yet, Avengers: Age of Ultron just turns him into another tortured soul with a penchant for bad one liners. Stark creates Ultron quickly with so little consideration. There’s been more effort put into potato chip flavors than the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence. Tony Stark creates his Frankenstein’s Monster and has barely any hand in the ultimate demise of his own evil machination.
The second problem with Marvel is how quickly they burned through the best stories of Tony Stark. His alcoholism was an afterthought in the second film. What could have been an entire movie about dealing with demons was reduced to one or two terrible scenes. The problem with Iron Man isn’t Downey Jr., but barely written scripts that have relied so heavily on his improvisation skills to give the character any degree of charm. Downey’s rapid-fire style has done the heavy lifting for Iron Man which was great in the short-term, but has expedited the feeling that we’ve already seen everything this Iron Man has to offer. In addition, the character traits that were once so appealing are starting to become like nails on a chalkboard. Watching Downey in Age of Ultron was like watching Roger Moore in A View to a Kill. The character is little more than a wink, a grin and some snappy banter.
The Marvel movies have never been more popular. Avengers: Age of Ultron will no doubt be an unmitigated, potentially box office record-breaking success. At some point, another actor or another character is going to don the armor. Maybe it would be better if someone else filled the iron boots before the character has completely worn out his welcome.
Am I the only one who thinks it’s time for a new Iron Man?
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5&feature=player_embedded&v=pnc360pUDRI
Originally published April 29, 2015. Updated April 15, 2018.
