Last Updated on July 30, 2021
Billionaire, genius, playboy and philanthropist. These are all very accurate descriptions of Tony Stark, but perhaps the world will forever remember him as one thing above all: The real first Avengers. Sure sure, the Captains America and Marvel have a few years on him, but to audiences around the world witnessing the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe years before anyone knew what that was, he was the Alpha and the Omega, and the first hero to lift the series on his shoulders.
But while the world fell in love with him thanks to Robert Downey Jr's iconic performance, giving him a debonair charm, rapier wit and the confidence of a man who knows he has all the answers, that's not all that has made him such a compelling character for the last 11 years. Over the course of the last decade, we have seen in Tony the ultimate tale of redemption, going from an insanely wealthy tycoon at the head of a weapons manufacturing empire, to a man saw the error of his ways and spent the rest of his life dedicating himself to achieving peace all around the world, and more difficulty, in himself.
Tony is a man with a complicated past, but over the course of all his cinematic outings, he has taken step after step toward healing his wounds while trying to earn his second chance at life. That hasn't always been easy, but smarter men than me have said no journey worth taking ever is. In this new piece, we will be examining the evolution of Tony Stark and how everything he's gone through and everything he fought so hard to achieve was all in the name of personal growth, making his story the most relatable and empowering in all of the Marvel Universe.
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I Am Iron Man: (IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, IRON MAN 2, THE AVENGERS)
It doesn’t take all that long into the first IRON MAN to get a sense of who Tony Stark is. Holding a glass of brown liquor in his hand as the Humvee rumbles across the desert road in Afghanistan, with several young soldiers eyeballing him and being far too nervous just breathing the same air as him. He’s suave and exudes as much wealth as he does a nigh-godlike air of mystery.
More noticeably, this guy is just way too cool for school – or at least the facade he’s crafted is. He would rather ditch a ceremony honoring him for his pioneering work in the weapons industry to play craps with young attractive women and seduce journalists who try to call him out on his brand of warmongering. This is the life he’s cultivated for himself as a way of pulling the metaphorical, highly priced shades over his eyes. Like many wealthy white men, he lives in the false glory of being called an innovator, under claims he’s really making the world a better place, but has, perhaps purposely, turned a blind eye to all the damage his so-called innovating has done to people around the world.
The roots of the character’s first dramatic evolution, which sets him on the course he would take throughout the whole MCU, is when he’s forced to confront that reality after being kidnapped by a terrorist organization and told to build for them his flagship missile. After coming face to face with the true nature of where his weapons end up and what they’re used for, he devises his plan of escape in the form of a massive mechanized suit, powered by his fancy new chest piece, a glowing reminder of how he has to use his second chance.
Across this marvelous first outing, we see him change from a narcissistic, corporate honcho with a mythological presence who is totally okay accepting zero accountability, to a man who decides to use his gifts – his mind and ingenuity – to actually make the world a better place. That means taking bold steps he never would imagine doing before – like budding a committed relationship with his longtime assistant Pepper Potts, fighting off his former friend and corporate partner who would try to use his new tech for the same evil he’s trying to reverse, and accepting a new mantle as Iron Man – no secret identities this time.
Before he gets on with his second adventure, he takes a stop off for a cameo at the end of THE INCREDIBLE HULK, where he lets General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross in on a little initiative known as The Avengers. While the scene is shoehorned in there for the sake of MCU continuity, between this moment and his moment with Nick Fury, Stark quickly becomes the go-to Avenger for dealing with government entities. He's the guy, almost like a politician, who becomes willing to get in close with bureaucrats…setting the stage for a later movie.
Come IRON MAN 2 he’s been Iron Man for a few months, and while he’s certainly trying to turn over a new leaf, he still basks in the fame and attention in ways only Tony Stark can. He puts on the Stark Expo as a chance to showcase new world-changing technology and ideas, and struts into a Senate hearing regarding the liability of his armor – making a show out of all of it. Like a lot of sequels, this is the part where the hero has to confront their past if it really means moving into the new future they’re trying to cultivate.
IRON MAN 2 may be filled with too many characters, including a woefully underused Mickey Rourke who plays a mad Russian with a love of exotic birds (how was this not a bigger deal?!), but while this is one of the weaker MCU outings there is something great and very important about Stark that comes out of it: a light being shone on his relationship with his father, Howard Stark, and confronting of his family legacy.
As we will see in later movies, he had a very jaded relationship with his father, and while the device in his heart is slowly killing him, he discovers the secret to curing himself lies in digging through his father’s own work. Finding the cure means taking a very small baby step through a door he kept closed for so long, and while there was plenty more work to do the foundation was laid to explore that relationship – coming to a head in AVENGERS: ENDGAME.
One of the key characters he grows more with here is his best pal James Rhodes, who now played by a new actor (Don Cheadle) sees his friend is hurting and wants to help lighten the load. But Tony, ever the man to take all the burden, drunkenly brawls with his buddy before eventually accepting Rhodey's new mantle as War Machine. This makes him every so slightly more willing to play nicely with others and gives him a brother in arms in the most literal sense.
At the end of this sequel, which also juggles the inclusion of S.H.I.E.L.D., he’s told he can’t be made part of the Avengers, given how he’s still not one to play well with others, especially gods and super soldiers. Come THE AVENGERS that’s exactly the hurdle he has to fully overcome, as he struggles to play nicely with the likes of Thor and Captain America. I mean, here’s a man who will stare down a super soldier and use Shakespeare to mock the God of Thunder, given that his ego still far outweighs even Mjolnir itself.
But indeed, the growth we see from him here is him discovering he not only needs to play well with others if it means saving the day, but that being a hero doesn’t just mean thinking two steps ahead of everyone else. It means making the sacrifice play, laying down on the wire while the other guy crawls over you (and not just cutting the wire). When he flies into the wormhole to destroy the invading forces for good (for now, rather), he shows he’s capable of that move. By the end, Iron Man has become much more than a guy in a tin can confronting his own issues, but a man worthy of being called a hero.
A Suit of Armor Around the World: (IRON MAN 3, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR)
After the events of THE AVENGERS – wherein Tony entered a wormhole and sent a nuke flying at the Chitauri ship only to barely make it back to the other side – we see a side of him that would go on to motivate him for years to come: fear and paranoia. He’s seen what’s out there firsthand and he’s smart enough to know it’s only a matter of time before they come back in greater forces than the first time. So, what does he do to both calm his mind and prepare for the future? What he does best of course: He tinkers and builds.
In a rather profound moment in IRON MAN 3 – not exactly a movie bursting with profundity – Tony is confronted by Pepper after once again failing to show up for her as a good partner should do. Downey, capable of immense vulnerability when he drops the charm, does an excellent job opening up another layer of Tony wherein he confesses a true fear of losing everything, especially, in his words, “the one thing I can’t live without.” And that’s Pepper. In this movie we see their bond explored more than before, as his actions are hinged primarily on keeping her safe and in his life.
That fear is only agitated as Tony suffers through his own PTSD, unable to sleep and haunted by memories of invading extraterrestrial threats. This causes him to build and build all sorts of unique suits of armor he can call to him remotely at any time, but even deep down inside he knows that’s probably never enough. In previous movies, he was able to get himself out of jams by using he impressive mind and knack for building things that bring the boom, but none of that would have been enough to stave off an invading army of aliens if not for the assistance of other mighty heroes.
This time around he also gets the help of a young child, Harley Keener, himself an engineer of sorts. A fun addition that gives the movie a playful twist, what we see Tony exhibiting here is the first of what would become of a strong mentor role, something he would expand on more a few years later as he shows a desire to help future generations of potential heroes.
What he ends up having to learn from all this, after going on a journey that robs him of all his toys and throws him back in the cave from which he emerged all those years ago, is that all that power stands for nothing if he can’t be the best version of himself without them. This is a theme that would eventually make its way to Cap and Thor (the latter much later), and come the end, he realizes that even without his toys and tricks, he is Iron Man, and that’s enough.
Always a confident guy on the surface this growth propels him to a more genuine sense of self come AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON. Yeah, he still has that effortless swagger and devil-may-care humor to him, but there’s also a greater air of maturity there. He’s taken on the leadership role after S.H.I.E.L.D falls, giving the team new toys and “making everyone look cool”. Still paranoid and worried about the threat from above, he also feels more responsibility to protect not only his love, and his friends, but the world as a whole.
Before the title emerges on screen Tony sees something that would make for a cataclysmic shift in who he is after he has a vision of the Avengers’ demise at the hands of…something. This is what leads him to invent Ultron as a way of furthering his goal of creating a “suit of armor around the world” to help monitor and eliminate threats. More than just his bounty of suits from IM3, these are meant to stop threats before they even happen (sounds a lot like S.H.I.E.L.D., no?), so that maybe, hopefully, when the day he saw in the vision comes they will be ready.
No scene sums up his motivations more than when he’s chopping wood with Steve Rogers, saying “Isn’t that the mission? Isn’t that the ‘why we fight’? So we can end the fight so we get to go home?” So much of what he does here and in the future is about doing what’s best for the team and the world they protect – which is a step up from where he was in IM3, using that Futurist mentality to try and do anything he can to keep everyone new in his life safe.
That boldness may come from the right place, but in trying to go too big he invents something that almost ends the world he’s trying to protect, leading him to where he is come CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. While he’s still trying to step up and keep the burden very much on his shoulders, he’s doing so from a more grounded level. This means calling back to that encounter with Ross, the new United States Secretary of Defense, who informs the team of the government's plan to enact what becomes known as the Sokovia Accords.
After the events of Sokovia in ULTRON (basically Tony's fault) and later the destruction at the start of CIVIL WAR, he sides with Ross and signs the Accords, which would keep the team under the check of the federal government. A big driving point for him in that regard is seeing the picture of Charlie Spencer, a young man killed in Sokovia. As said before, Tony has always put too much on his shoulders out of a sense of responsibility, and here the even greater pressure of guilt adds even more weight. As said before, he has no problem working with Washington suits, especially if it means attaining some resemblance of peace.
In a great scene between him and Cap, he talks about how much of his motivation of signing the Accords comes from wanting more accountability for their actions, something he's been trying to establish since the very first movie. More importantly, keeping Pepper in his life is a major factor. In being so obsessive in trying to protect people he pushed her away, and this is his chance to step back and maintain the only truly real, grounded aspect of his life.
We also get a glimpse into his past, as we learn about the final interaction he had with his mother and father before they died, an interaction he regretted ever since. While all of that is bubbling to the surface everything around him is crumbling, forcing him to confront members of his team for the sake of trying to keep the peace and order he so desperately wants. He put so much on the line, and lost a lot (almost losing Rhodey for good), including trust in people who were once his friends, and so with that a way of trying to put pieces back together meant looking to the future.
Billionaire, Genius, Husband, Mentor, Father: (SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, AVENGERS: ENDGAME)
As the movies have progressed and Tony has evolved, we’ve seen him using the armor less and less, taking a back seat to the hero game from the earlier movies. His suits only got him so far come IRON MAN 3, and his efforts to put armor all around the world backfired in his face. Now, as the team has crumbled with him at the front of the pack (along with Cap), he’s now looking to the hero game behind the scenes more than ever before, and that involves the young Spider-Man.
HOMECOMING is hardly a shared effort between Tony Stark and Peter Parker, but the scenes with him do a lot to contextualize where he’s at in this time. He’s suiting Parker up with the latest gear, but there’s a reservation he has in letting him unleash all his Spidey powers beyond handling neighborhood bike thieves. He knows what it’s like to be young, ambitious and a bit reckless, and he knows through his years in the hero game that can all get you killed. More measured and mature, but as quick with words as always, he opens up to Parker about why it's so important for him to follow his rules: “And if you died, I feel like that’s on me.” One of the best testaments to Downey's work in these latter movies is how well he turned Stark into the father figure he is while losing none of the whimsical, devilish sparks behind his eyes.
While he has issues with his own father to work out, he’s certainly becoming a surrogate one of sorts to Peter, and that brings out a whole new vulnerability in him, and along with his relationship with Pepper, gives him something grounded to hold on to with all he has.
In fact, that dynamic he has with Peter makes up the framework for much of what would define Tony Stark for the rest of his time in the MCU. In AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, the vision he saw in ULTRON was finally coming to fruition, and all he can think about doing it stopping it as best he can, while at the same time trying to keep Parker out of the fray (and failing). Still with a big head and quick wit, he goes toe-to-toe with Doctor Strange about how to approach the carnage, with Stark all in for ending the threat head-on and quickly.
Here we see the leader in Tony, much like a Captain America himself, laying out the plan and commanding the stage with force and immediacy, burying his own fears underneath it all. Everything he's seen and tried to prepare for is coming to a head, and what we see in him is desperation, and he fights more fiercely than ever before as if he knows it's all or nothing. Of course, when they lose, he's left on Titan, solemn and defeated as the kid he tried so hard to protect vanished in his arms. After everything he tried to do to stop what he saw from coming to pass, he failed.
In ENDGAME Tony is near death, adrift in space with no one but a perpetually grouchy Nebula to keep him company. But he's saved, and when he arrives home the first thing he can say to Cap is, "I lost the kid." He has a lot to be happy about, including Pepper being alive, but all he can think about is the protege he lost and the betrayal of Cap. As Tony is quick to throw at him, he wasn't there when they were all needed, together. He recounts how he warned them this was going to happen, and about all he tried to do to keep everyone safe. In the end, and after all these years, he's just done and has nothing left to give.
Years down the road he's attained the domestic bliss he probably thought he'd never have, with a new future finally in his arms, and that only needs love, attention and juice pops. After all these years, here is a whole new sweet side to him we've never seen. Perhaps thanks to his time with Peter he's in full dad mode, incredibly loving and content, for the most part. But, as he told Cap in CIVIL WAR, he can't stop because he doesn't want to stop, and though reluctant answers the call to try and bring everyone back. But he has a new purpose that's more important, and that means keeping everything new in his life intact.
Years ago we got the best taste of Tony's dynamic with his father, who had died long before, but thanks to a time heist he got to (accidentally) meet up with his pops and have perhaps their first heart-to-heart. Tony gets to see Howard with his guard down and talk to him about parenting. Tony gets to pass on his own teachings, and in the process gets a sense of closure that he had never gotten before Howard's untimely and shocking death. This is one huge step towards Tony finally having inner peace.
The next massive step would be his biggest ever. On this journey, we've discussed how one core element to Tony's arc has been putting aside the narcissistic billionaire and becoming the slightly less narcissistic hero, the man who has put everything on the line to keep the peace and will make the big sacrifice in order to save everyone else. In a last-ditch effort to take Thanos down for good and save the entire universe, Tony Stark gets ahold of all the Infinity Stones in his own makeshift gauntlet, and with one last "I am Iron Man, " snaps his fingers, and makes the biggest sacrifice. He's mortally wounded, but everyone else, including Peter, Pepper, Rhodey, his daughter Morgan and his friends are safe. After years of planning, building, leading, fearing and striving for world peace as much as inner peace, he can finally rest.
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What makes Tony's last moment so profound is that not only are we seeing the last of his like in these movies again, but because it was just so damn perfect and the ultimate fulfillment of his entire, decade-long arc. In as poetic a moment as Marvel is ever likely to dish out, when he snaps his fingers and Thanos and his army vanish into nothing, he finally got to have the moment that sums up everything his time as Iron Man had been building up to: He laid down on the wire, and let literally everyone alive crawl over him.
From his earliest motivations in IRON MAN to his final acts in AVENGERS; ENDGAME, Tony has been about trying to achieve peace both in himself and for everyone else. His flaws and mistakes came from putting too much on himself in pursuit of that goal, as learning the proper meaning of teamwork has always been something he's had to overcome. But across all his failures and triumphs what has made him so endearing was that, as a man of science, he tried to learn from those mistakes and improve on himself every time. If we have learned anything from this exploration of Tony Stark it's that what made him a true hero wasn't his dope armor or fast quips, but that he was always striving to be better, to learn from the mistakes of the past and make for a better tomorrow. In doing so he became not only a better Avenger but a better man, and after getting there with a little charm and razzle-dazzle, has become a character that will leave on stamp on pop culture forever.
Be sure to check out our other entry in the Evolution series!
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