Marvel Heroes: Iron Man
“I am Iron Man”, is the iconic quote from Tony Stark at the end of Iron Man, the first movie in the MCU, and in last year’s Avengers Endgame. Tony Stark has gone through several character arcs through most of the films in the MCU, and there’s a lot to mention about his journey across the films.
But in this article, my main focus will be on the first Iron Man movie, which is part of the Iron Man trilogy. To give a broad overview of Tony’s journey across the Iron Man trilogy, this is how it looks like, visually:
Let’s look at Tony’s hero’s journey in the first Iron Man film.
Tony starts off as the villain in this movie.
This is because of the following reasons:
1. He’s a cold-blooded arms-dealer who profits from the sufferings of others. He unapologetically accepts being called the Merchant of Death by a Vanity Fair reporter.
2. He is a heartless narcissist who only cares about himself.
3. He is an arrogant guy who doesn’t care about the consequences of those around him.
That looks like a very bad resume for a protagonist. But why does the audience get to care such a character? That’s because of what happens to him at the beginning of the film, which is the beginning of his call to adventure.
Tony lives like a celebrity and he is adored by the community that protects him (the US Military convoy in Afghanistan). But all this changes when this community is taken away from him. He gets ambushed by his own weapons by the terror organization called the Ten Rings leaving him vulnerable.
He goes through some form of penance for his mistakes and here’s a list of what he goes through:
1. During the attack when he gets knocked out, Yinsen saves his life by using an electromagnet put in Tony’s chest, powered by a car battery to keep the shrapnel from the explosion from reaching his heart.
2. He’s in constant pain after gaining consciousness he is shocked to see the electromagnet in his chest.
3. Being called, “the greatest mass murderer in the history of America” by one of the terrorists, and been shown all his weapons.
4. He has to walk around with a car battery that powers the one thing that keeps him alive.
5. He gets tortured when he refused the demands of the Ten Rings group for building the Jericho missile.
Through this punishment, the negative image of Tony Stark which is what we see in the beginning of the movie begins to fade away. We start to care about this character than to loathe what he had done in his old life.
Yinsen, who is like the mentor to Tony in his hero’s journey, gives Tony a wake-up call telling him that he has to do something.
What we also learn about Tony is that, during this traumatic event in his life, he doesn’t crack. His personality is resilient enough not to. Instead, he absorbs the puncture by adapting his life around this event. He uses this traumatic event as an opportunity to adapt his own identity into a new narrative.
After his escape from the cave in the Mark, and being rescued by Rhodey and the military, the first thing he does when he gets back to civilization is to set things right.
One would have thought that it would be prudent for him to go the hospital after 3 months of torture, trauma and possibly malnutrition, but he doesn’t do that.
He tells Pepper that he wants an American cheeseburger and a press meeting where he announced the shutting down of the weapons division in Stark Industries. This builds up another positive layer of change in the movie. He realizes his flaw; that of building weapons that the leader of the Ten Rings, “Whoever holds the latest Stark weapons, rules these lands”.
He believes that he has more to offer to the world than just, “making things to blow up”. From the cave, he gets a perspective of what he was doing was wrong. But this isn’t going to be easy, as just giving a statement to the media like he did during the press conference.
He takes action by building the Mark 2 Iron Man suit, tests it, crashes it, builds another one and goes to destroy his weapons in Afghanistan. He is doing all he can to fix his mistakes. This is the manifestation of his imagination repairing the damage done to his narrative.
Tony’s hero’s journey isn’t one that changes his personality completely, i.e. changing from the narcissist character to an absolute self-righteous person. His foundational self-image is what changes.
His attitude and convictions don’t, as seen in Avengers: Age of Ultron where he is convinced that the Avengers themselves aren’t enough to protect the world from other greater threats and with that in mind he creates Ultron, “the suit of armor around the world”.
As for his attitude, he is still narcissistic but this can be backed up. If he walks into a room and acts like the smartest person in the room, it’s because he is. And he puts this into good use to come up with solutions. This is not something that he overcomes and shouldn’t be seen as a flaw, but rather it’s the essence of who Tony is.
But even though Tony is the stereotypical billionaire playboy with narcissistic tendencies, he still has a heart. When Yinsen was threatened by Raza the leader of the Ten Rings, he risks his life to defend him. He refuses Yinsen to go fight alone and after Tony manages to use the Mark 1 suit, he shares an emotional moment with Yinsen before he dies from the bullet wounds.
When he gets back to civilization, we might think that he has to change completely but his personality doesn’t. This is until we realize, as the film progresses that it’s all an act. It’s all flashy show and no truth. This is something that becomes more prevalent in Iron Man 2.
In Iron Man 2, Tony leads the spectacular flashy expo that pays homage to his father. It’s all spectacle at the front but this symbolically hides the resentment that Tony has with his father. It may also be because of keeping up with his father’s legacy.
But despite all this flashy appearances that Tony displays to the public, we know that he’s more than that. When he’s confronted by Christine Everheart, the Vanity Fair reporter about the Stark Industries weapons in Gulmira, he refuses to take accountability for this but we know that as Iron Man, he will go and do something about it, by blowing up those weapons and punching the terrorists. In reality, he takes responsibility for this.
When he was pursued by two pilots in jet fighter planes and one of the planes got hit by Tony (while in his Iron Man suit), he saves that pilot’s life before he plunged to his death. This shows that Tony still cares about others than himself. He came out of the cave a different person. We see him act as an obnoxious billionaire but deep down he has a heart.
And that’s why the audience cares about Tony Stark.
The first Iron Man film is Tony’s redemption story, and a hero’s journey, a journey of a man whose story started as a villain and ends as a man whose foundational self-image changes.
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