Another Pass at Iron Man 2
This week on Another Pass, Sam and Case are joined by Red and Blue from Overly Sarcastic Productions to take another look at Iron Man 2. We dig into the film’s place in the early MCU, its tangled ambitions, its missed opportunities, and why this sequel is more fascinating—and more frustrating—than its reputation suggests.
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Another Pass Full Episode
Originally aired: January 16, 2026
Music by Vin Macri and Matt Brogan
Podcast Edited by Sophia Ricciardi
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Outline
Introduction and Setting Context (00:00 - 01:17)
Introduction to 'Another Pass' podcast focused on critically reviewing flawed but fascinating movies.
Today's episode focal point: Iron Man 2 and its place in the MCU Phase One.
Background on MCU Phase One Rewatch (01:17 - 04:52)
Red and Blue's MCU Phase 1 rewatch journey, voice memo files evolution.
Discussion on Iron Man 2 as early MCU and its general reception and reputation.
Disney Acquisition and Character Edges (04:52 - 06:03)
Discussion on Marvel's acquisition by Disney in 2009 and its effects on MCU’s tone and character portrayals.
Exploration of Justin Hammer as Marvel's first gay Disney character and the evolution of sexism depictions in MCU pre- and post-acquisition.
Personal Experiences & Nostalgia (06:03 - 10:27)
Case shares personal birthday tradition of watching MCU May releases.
Sam shares background on favorite characters, preference for Thor, and experience with Iron Man 2 and Incredible Hulk.
Phase One’s Impact and Early MCU Experiences (10:27 - 21:23)
Sam recounts childhood MCU viewing preferences and early impressions of Iron Man 2.
Reflections on when movies were first realized to be potentially 'bad' (Last Airbender as example).
Nature vs. Nurture and Character Mirrors (21:23 - 31:38)
Deep dive into Tony Stark's foils: Ivan Vanko as brilliance corrupted, Justin Hammer as surface-level money-driven, Rhodey as worthy successor.
Themes of legacy, performance personas, and characters as reflections of Tony Stark’s facets.
️ SHIELD’s Role and Clean Energy Themes (31:38 - 42:13)
Discussion on SHIELD’s abrupt narrative entry and Natasha Romanoff’s character introduction.
Iron Man’s clean energy arc initially central but deprioritized post-Phase One.
Tony Stark Character Study Continued (42:13 - 51:43)
Tony’s difficulty with vulnerability and communication, particularly in relationships with Pepper and Rhodey.
His self-destructive tendencies and manipulation to protect legacy.
Comparison with Captain America and Character Dynamics (51:43 - 01:01:44)
Similarities and differences between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in terms of personality, charisma, and heroism.
Impact of paternal relationships on both characters.
Film’s Visuals and Action Choreography Appreciation (01:01:44 - 01:12:11)
Praise for the visual effects and choreography, especially fight scenes involving Iron Man and War Machine.
Influence of Genndy Tartakovsky’s choreography on key fight scenes.
Plot Fixes and Structural Critiques (01:12:11 - 01:22:37)
Proposal to streamline Tony’s palladium poisoning and father issues subplot for clarity and emotional impact.
Suggestions to either cut or significantly expand Howard Stark’s involvement for better narrative coherence.
️ Villain Dynamics and Plot Simplification Proposals (01:22:37 - 01:33:40)
Pitch to kill off Ivan Vanko early to tighten story and increase stakes around spread of arc reactor tech.
Hammer’s role as comic relief vs. Vanko’s as genuine threat.
Relationship Between Hammer and Vanko (01:33:40 - 01:44:24)
Exploration of Hammer as incompetent and Vanko as the motivated mastermind.
Suggestions for portraying toxic partnership dynamic with comedic and dramatic potential.
Refining Howard Stark’s Role and SHIELD Integration (01:44:24 - 01:54:41)
Proposal to reduce Howard Stark’s screen time and make his role more subtle, focusing on inspirational content rather than explicit instructions.
Advocation for earlier and smoother integration of SHIELD, especially Agent Coulson, to make narrative transitions more organic.
️ Iron Man Tech and Narrative Consequences (01:54:41 - 02:02:11)
Discussion on technology leakage leading to arms race and justification for Tony’s technological evolution (nanotech in later films).
Observations on Iron Man’s armor importance fading in MCU.
Closing Remarks and Plugs (02:02:11 - 02:02:13)
Appreciation for briefcase suit-up scene and early MCU practical effects.
Final praise for Tony Stark’s characterization as a serious fighter, contrast with later quip-heavy style.
Transcription
00:00
Red
Pretty minimal. Howard content in the sequence that we flippantly described as Tony figures out his dad loved him and then he fixes the problem that was killing him the most.
00:08
Blue
Walt Disney coded thing is, I want to tell you, my son, that I love you, but all I know how to do is build theme parks. So you're going to have to read between the lines on this one and figure it out for me.
00:18
Red
I'm sure. I'm confident you'll be. Listen, son, I figured out a new element. I don't know what to do with it, you don't know what to do with it, but maybe someday you'll have a use for it. So I'll build the entirety of my Epcot center around it.
00:30
Sam
You know, sometimes you have to build a utopia to tell your kid that you love them instead of using words.
00:40
Blue
Welcome to certain Another Pass podcast with.
00:43
Case
Case and Sam, where we take another look at movies that we find fascinating but flawed. Let's see how we could have fixed them. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Another Past podcast.
00:57
Red
I'm.
00:57
Case
I'm Case Aiken, and as always, I'm joined by my co host, Sam Alicea.
01:01
Sam
Hi.
01:02
Case
Hi, Sam. It feels like it's been forever since we've recorded because now we're on kind of a monthly schedule for our main episodes. But it's so great to be chatting with you today.
01:13
Sam
Yeah, I'm excited.
01:14
Case
So we are digging back into the mcu. It's been a minute since we've had a conversation about an MCU movie and I'm excited to have this one because it's on a movie I honestly rather like because today we. We are going to talk about Iron Man 2. And to have that conversation, we are joined by Red and Blue from Overly Sarcastic Productions.
01:32
Red
What's up?
01:33
Blue
How's it going?
01:34
Case
So, Red, you have been on another pass before. Blue, this is your first time. Thank you so much for joining us over here.
01:40
Blue
I am new and I'm excited to be here.
01:42
Red
And the last time I was here, you made me watch Reboot Season four again, so this will be nice. Compared to that, I also made you.
01:48
Case
Watch Reboot Season three again.
01:50
Red
That's true, that's true. It really helped balance it out.
01:53
Case
But yeah, so I wanted to talk to you all about Iron Man 2 because you did a big rewatch of the MCU Phase one over on your. This was on the after show show, I believe, as bonus episodes, right?
02:07
Red
Yes. It got turned into two mainline videos because you did a detailed diatribe about Phase One. And then I dipped in with. And Winter Soldier was the best, by the way, in my own video. But we recorded these things called the voice memo files. Cause I was just, like, hanging out at your place for like a week. And we just watched through all of Phase One, and were like, we're in same place. And I just open up voice memos on my phone. It's like, let's just talk about what we just watched. And it turned out we could just upload them. And they just got added to the Patreon after show podcast. And people really liked them. So we recorded them often.
02:38
Blue
20 minutes on Iron Man 1. And by the time we got to Avengers and Winter Soldier, it had rapidly ballooned to over an hour each.
02:45
Red
Yeah. Which is, you know, kind of inevitable. But, yeah, Iron Man 2 was obviously pretty early in that rewatch, or in my case, watch. I'd literally never seen it before. So it was. It was interesting. It was a interesting little. Little excursion back in time.
03:00
Case
Yeah. Rewatching this one. So, like, cards on the table. This movie had the reputation of being like, the bad one for a while. It was certainly seen as, like, one of the low points of Phase One, but I always had a soft spot for it. Like, I. Iron man was one of my favorite characters growing up because I, like. I liked the idea of making a cool suit of power armor. Like, of course, that just seems so goddamn awesome. Like, having rocket boots, you know, having this whole like. Like all the. The accout. Rhodey would want to have added on to your machine always just seems so cool. And so Iron man was always a character I really liked. And then obviously the first one was so fantastic, and the second one I just really enjoyed.
03:40
Case
But then people had gripes with it, and looking back on it now in 2025, it's so hard to see those gripes because most of them were like, oh, it feels too bloated and kind of scattershot. And I'm like, it is so tight relative to a modern MCU movie.
03:56
Blue
Our standards have been so worn down over the decade.
04:01
Red
At least with Iron Man 2, you knew that everything that they put in that movie was gonna be something. I mean, they didn't bring back Hammer, but they brought back all of those ideas. All.
04:10
Case
They didn't bring back Hammer, frankly. Like, rewatching this. Sam Rockwell is a goddamn legend. Like, he's doing such a great job playing this. This kind of difficult character. Like Hammer is canonically one of the first, like, gay characters in Marvel Comics.
04:26
Red
Oh no.
04:27
Case
And you know, like, there's some like making your bad guy. I forget what the trope exactly is called.
04:33
Red
But when like queer coded villains.
04:34
Case
Queer coded villains. There we go.
04:35
Red
When you. When you put your representation in the bad guy for the plausible deniability of it or you know, to. To just tie on the older like Hays code stuff of like, it's okay to bring in this character and make them evil as long as we show that everything about them is in some way wrong, morally speaking. In more recent years, it's been a little bit more like we want to throw in more queer characters. We don't necessarily want to change any of our good guys who are all sort of cast from a very. Anyway, all that to say, I didn't know that Hammer was one of Marvel's first gay characters. And that's a little Unfortunate.
05:07
Blue
The 99th Disney's first gay character.
05:10
Red
Yeah. When Disney proud tradition. He actually retroactively became Disney's first gay character.
05:17
Case
Oh yeah. That actually I didn't stop to look this up. Like when this falls in the Disney timeline, I think this is right before the purchase or like coming out in as the purchase is occurring.
05:26
Blue
Yeah.
05:27
Case
Because it was distinctly. By the time we got to Thor and Captain America, Disney had done that purchase. But Iron Man 1 was a leap of faith that was not done with any Disney money. So I just don't remember what too. Because that had a little bit of a gap. It had the one year gap between phase one movies. That happened because you had Iron Man 1 and Incredible Hulk and then Iron Man 2, I believe was two years later.
05:48
Blue
Yeah. 2010. It was 2008. 2008. 2010, I think 11. 11 and then 12 was Avengers.
05:56
Red
Disney bought Marvel in 2009.
05:57
Blue
Yeah.
05:58
Case
Okay.
05:58
Blue
So it happened in production. Yeah.
06:01
Case
But yeah, there we go. And you can still feel some of that pre Disney kind of edge that's going on in this movie. And some of that by that edge, I mean is like some of the characters are kind of sexist in a way that they wouldn't be allowed to be in like post Disney buyout.
06:15
Red
Disney prefers a completely different kind of sexism where women are allowed to look ugly.
06:20
Case
You can't be sexist under a Disney regime. I'm just saying that the types of sex where like, yeah, like Disney does.
06:27
Red
This woman is so hot sexism. Sorry. Marvel does this woman is so hot sexism. Disney does this woman is never allowed to have an ugly facial expression Sexism.
06:34
Case
Right.
06:34
Red
Two different kinds of. The same kind of. You Must be a limited type of person in order to be a woman in my space kind of thing. It's fun. Fun.
06:43
Case
But before we dive too deep into this, I want to take a step back and I want to talk about our respective experiences with it. Like, I mentioned that I was a big Iron man fan. I saw it opening night, as has been my tradition, because my birthday is May 3rd, and that just happens to be the opening weekend for usually a major Marvel movie. And so Both Iron Man 1 and 2 happen to be on respective birthdays of mine, whether or not it was literally the day of or if it was that weekend. But they tend to be notoriously May 3, 2022. Spider Man 1. Spider Man 1 came out on May 3, and it had been an 18 year production cycle, and I had turned 18 on that day, and that was like a big mom for me.
07:26
Red
Nice.
07:27
Case
But so I was. I like, look, I'm like, everyone knows I'm a comic book nut. Iron man is a character that I really liked as a kid. I was a huge fan of the cartoon in the 90s. The character has always been one that I've appreciated. And the only reason that he has sort of fallen down a few pegs is because I've developed class consciousness over the years.
07:50
Red
When you're a child, you're like, wow, someday I wish I could be as rich as he was so I could buy my own power armor. And then you're like, wait, maybe nobody should be as rich as he is.
07:57
Blue
Tony.
07:58
Case
God damn it.
07:58
Blue
Pay your fucking taxes.
08:01
Red
Tony. You could solve so many more problems by donating to charity.
08:05
Case
Oh, and we've got the poster boy for that shit going on in this movie also, which we'll talk about eventually. And Red, you mentioned that you only saw this for the first time, right?
08:14
Red
Yes. So I'm pretty sure I watched Iron Man 1 the same way I watched most movies at that time, which is I visited my cousins twice a year for birthdays. And we probably saw it then. And I remember liking it. I thought it was very cool. It kind of just like flowed over me as a cool action movie where stuff happened. I don't think I really started getting, like, interested in the character of Iron man until Earth's Mightiest Heroes came out. And I was watching that because I really like how they do him in that. He's very similar to the version that you see in the mcu.
08:42
Red
Obviously cast from the same mold, but he's a little bit more likable because they sort of play up the elements of Tony that I find most interesting, which are sort of his more like ADHD traits where he's. He's a little bit like, sorry, I'm not paying attention to this board meeting. I had this really cool idea for a hologram device I'm working on instead. Like, yeah, see, that's the part that I find aspirational is like, what if you could make a work environment where that was just fine, actually. But, you know, I really like that version of Tony. He wasn't like my favorite. I've always been a Thor fan at heart. But he's, you know, he's up there, he's fun, he's got an interesting angle on things.
09:13
Red
As the character who builds his superpowers, I think it's interesting that he has pretty much infinite potential for upgrades and power ups. Whereas any character whose powers are in some way kind of built in, it's a little bit harder to justify them gaining, like a significant change in their power set. Unless some, you know, comic book bullshit happens. I suppose by that definition, it's very easy to do it. It's just. It always feels a little bit more of like an ass pull. Except when Tony's like, I built a new thing. Let's see how it works. That is completely plausible in a Tony star. So I just thought he was interesting as an addition to the team.
09:41
Red
But I fully had not seen Iron Man 2 until we sat down to watch it, because we had back to back two movies that I had not seen but heard were bad because we had Incredible Hulk and then we had Iron Man 2 and Incredible Hulk. I was like, I've heard only bad things and I watched it. I was like, this movie's fine, actually. In fact, I think if I seen this movie at a formative age, I would have liked it way more than the other movies because it does some tropes. I really, I have only one major.
10:02
Case
Gripe with the Incredible Hulk, and that is that it is such a victim of the orange and teal color correction era. It is, it is aggressive. Especially when they're like, around the, like the Brazilian, like, bottle factory where they like, try to play up the green as being like the most like, like saturated greens.
10:20
Red
Yeah, it's a little hard on the.
10:22
Case
Eyes, but I, I enjoy, like. Look, let's get down to brass tacks here. Phase one is just a monumental work. Like, oh, yeah, the bad one of phase one is still like a great. Most standards.
10:33
Red
Yeah, yeah, no, that's exactly it.
10:35
Blue
To mention my experience with it more in line with the kind of seeing it as it came out. But I didn't see Hulk when it came out because I was, what, 12 when Iron Man 1 hit theaters? So I was kind of aware of it, but I was dumb and more interested in playing video games on my PS3 instead. To follow along with movies, comic books. I never read any of that stuff. I watched Spider man, and then they did all the Spider man movies, and I liked the third one, and everyone else said it was bad, so I thought my tastes were just completely out of sync with everybody else. So I'm like, I'm not good at that.
11:05
Case
I like the third one, too.
11:07
Blue
Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate you.
11:09
Case
If for no other reason than the Sandman first coming out of the sand scene, like, that scene by itself saves that masterpiece.
11:16
Red
That scene by itself is a perfect short film. And then it's attached to a very long film where a bunch of other very silly things happen.
11:22
Blue
Well, it was in good company in the 2000s, but I did see Iron Man 2. I don't know if I saw it in theaters or not, but I definitely saw it within when it came out before. For going to see Avengers, didn't see Thor, didn't see Captain America. So I was interested enough in Iron man after seeing it and being like, this is a perfect film. That Iron Man 2 is a little bit of a letdown comparison. But I was still at the age where I'm like, oh, this is great. I've never seen a movie I didn't like before. This is awesome. And I'm having fun. So I didn't really clock any of the potential narrative problems with it that we'll get to in a little bit. I was like, this is Warren, man, this is cool. I'm having fun.
12:01
Blue
I am 11 years old or what? Like 13 at that point? 14.
12:05
Red
So, yeah, it is. This is a complete side note. It is a kind of interesting question to ask, like, what was the first movie you saw where you realized movies could be bad? Because I think that every kid has a moment because, you know, for the most part, it's like a movie is happening. Shapes, exciting colors and noises. I'm having a good time. And then at some point, you watch a movie and you're like, no, wait a minute, I'm not having fun. That's allowed. And I remember the exact moment I had that, which was the sort of sinking feeling in my stomach after I walked out of theater after watching Last Airbender.
12:32
Case
Oh, yeah, that'll do it.
12:34
Red
Yeah. Yeah, but it's just. It's always an interesting question to me because there's. It's a little, like, awakening moment. I think that every child goes through media betrays you.
12:43
Case
Really? I like that. Okay, so I don't mean just to be, like, a bastion of positivity on this call, but, like, saying that out.
12:50
Sam
Loud because I knew exactly at that moment, Klosey would be like, no.
12:58
Red
It'S not allowed.
12:59
Sam
Just sidetrack here because Red has let us down a thing. And I need to defend myself on this because all of my friends are like, why would you think that? But I was in theater, and I was such a huge he man fan. Like, I loved He Man. And the thing is that Masters of the Universe is a great movie. It's not He Man. And so as a kid, as I was watching that, I'm looking for, like, these moments, right? And, like, these character things that are happening, they weren't happening. And I just, like. I just felt like as I was watching the film, just like, this sinking feeling that this just wasn't. This wasn't what I expected. Like, it was the first time that I had gone to a movie and had expectations, and then none of them were met. Yeah.
13:49
Red
Yeah. I mean, that's why Last Airbender, because I was like, if they don't pull out the giant waterbending Kaiju, then what are we even doing? And then they didn't. And I was like, okay, I guess. I guess I'm done. Because I. I think that's it. When you go in with expectations, you learn that they can be let down. And, I mean, it's got a 21% on rotten tomato, so it's not like you're in the minority here. Like, everyone also, I know people who.
14:11
Sam
Really, really love that film a lot and, like, it is, like, performative movie for them. Even people my age that, like, saw in theater, same age as me, I just, like, that was the first film. I was just like, this is not what I signed up for.
14:31
Red
I've been betrayed, bamboozled to get us back on track.
14:35
Sam
I did see Iron Man 2 in theaters. Liked it. Then I would admit that coming off of Iron Man 1, that feels like such a perfect film. This film moves at a much slower pace, and I think it's kind of dealing with some more intricate kind of feelings and emotions about now that Tony no longer can be the warmonger that he has always been. We kind of did that, but this touches more on that. And so I think that this movie Has a overall more serious tone. And I think for some theater goers, that was kind of like a, you know, a letdown. They wanted it to be, like, more fun. And, like, this movie tries. It's best to, like, tackle more of those themes. And it's a good continuation. I like this movie. I think it's perfectly fine.
15:25
Sam
I prefer it to Iron Man 3. Like, this is like, you know, like, I think that as far as the Iron man series goes, like, 1 and 2 are just fine. So I did not appreciate that after this film, my friend Vash would continue to call me Jarvis or Pepper Potts for the rest of our friendship because he sees me as an assistant. But yes, there was that.
15:50
Red
What was that were talking about with Disney? Sexism. Must find a way to limit the woman, otherwise she might think she's a real person.
15:58
Sam
Well, they made her CEO in this, which he reminded me. So I shouldn't feel bad anytime someone's.
16:04
Red
Like, you shouldn't feel bad, you know.
16:06
Sam
Because somehow you do anyway.
16:09
Red
Yeah, it's crazy.
16:11
Case
Well, so I, I think you bring up a good point just in. In the debate between this and Iron Man 1. So Iron Man 1 is a remarkably streamlined movie. And by that I mean, like, in post production or not post production. In pre production. Pardon me. They almost went with the Mandarin as the plot and decided to veer away from that because Mark Millar in their writers group was like, this is a terrible idea. And they were like, oh, yeah, this is a terrible idea. Why don't we just have another armor guy? Which created the situation that was. And this movie is still a victim of it. The MCU reputation for always having a bad, evil version of the hero as the villain for the piece.
16:50
Red
An evil buffer palette swapped version of the main guy is the guy who you're fighting.
16:54
Blue
There's the pro ZD clip where he's like. He's like the hero, but he's bad and he's gray.
17:00
Red
And I got a shout out. Cosmonaut Marcus calls it an erjb or Evil Robot. Jeff Bridges. Yeah, for short. Because it's. It's always. Every movie has an erjb.
17:12
Case
Well, and. And that was very true for including this one because, like, in this one. So they call. They. I say they call in the movie. They never actually call the character Whiplash, but, like, everyone called the character Whiplash, but it's the Crimson Dynamo.
17:24
Red
Like, oh, of course it is.
17:27
Case
It's a fusion of the Crimson Dynamo and Whiplash as a character like Dynamo Blue.
17:32
Red
I can See, you googling. Dynamo was in Earth's Mightiest Hero. He was the guy in the bigger mech suit. Yeah, yeah, that guy.
17:38
Case
Interesting. Yeah. The dad, specifically is the character who's supposed to be the Crimson Dynamo. Oh, Anton Vanko.
17:44
Sam
Right.
17:45
Red
Yeah.
17:45
Case
But. But they're just doing, like. They're doing this, like, weird fusion situation with that. But then we also have Justin Hammer. We have the stuff going on with. They're doing a. A take on the demon in the bottle story and, like, hey, needed to check that one off. A conversation about Iron Man 2. It's not super upfront because the actual alcoholism component of the character isn't actually addressed in this movie. He's just as drunk and has, like, a rough scene.
18:12
Red
He's having alcohol, like, symptoms from his poisoning situation.
18:16
Case
Correct. And made worse by the dirty Martini Chucks. Right.
18:21
Red
That could be helping. But, like, he's one of those, like, I have heard, because I remember I talked to my dad about this because he was reading a lot of these comics when they were coming out, so he's very familiar with Tony Stark, like, plot line. And he saw the point where the culture around alcohol consumption went from, you know, like, oh, James Bond, martini in hand. It's a decorative component of any given scene to, like, hey, if you're drinking that much, it's not good. And, like, started becoming a problem that was being addressed in certain situations. So characters who had previously just been cool suddenly became alcoholics because, like, they were always doing that. It's just. It was becoming more aware that, like, hey, that's bad. You shouldn't be doing that.
19:01
Blue
This is one of the four stock poses we Dr.
19:04
Red
Them in.
19:04
Blue
Maybe we can start to examine the consequences of that.
19:07
Red
Well, in the same way that, like, smoking used to just be a default background thing everyone did to take breaks between scenes. And then it was like, if you're smoking that much, it's not good. But yeah, cultural change.
19:20
Case
Yeah, cultural change. Back in the day with the. The Superman radio series, Cuddy Stark Whiskey used to be one of their sponsors. And I know this because I have the. The goddamn radio tapes.
19:29
Red
Whoa.
19:30
Case
And have listened to, like, the. The Superman Batman crossover. The first one we have on record. It's just ar.
19:38
Blue
I'm imagining, like, the memes of the Ceta crystal from Star wars, where it was like, in. In, like, Brazil, they couldn't actually do, like, cut to commercials, so they had to, like, you know, Obi Wan reaches into the. The box to pull out Luke's lightsaber, and they have an insert of like him pulling up a beer and like showing to camera. It's a whole thing. There's like 40 of them.
20:00
Red
Iron man, what I've heard, they didn't.
20:01
Case
Even have property to do that with because there's so much placement for product placement in this movie.
20:07
Red
But it's unbelievable seeing Palpatine force pull like a bottle of beer in his hand and then just like. Anyway, back to killing you. But yeah, so one of the things.
20:17
Case
I wanted to talk about with all the different characters that are in play, the different like plot threads that are in play in this movie is there's a really strong nature versus nurture theme going on. And I thought it was really interesting looking like from the jump. Like we get the opening sequence is creating not in a cave, but in a pretty similar set of circumstances, an arc reactor, functionally. And so. And we get his father being. It should have been you. You know, we. So we get this whole like, scenario of a person who has theoretically the same limitless potential as Tony Stark. He's like just as brilliant of a character, but he's raised in this terrible situation that like puts, you know, puts him in prison for a number of years.
20:57
Case
Clearly he gets messed up because Mickey Rourke had infamously an accident and then a lot of plastic surgery after that. So you have to imagine that the character got at least decked in the face a few times.
21:09
Red
Right? Messed up.
21:10
Case
But then we also have Justin Hammer, who is coming from a similar nature standpoint, but doesn't have that same kind of spark in him to be this creative bastion that Tony Stark is. But he's similarly a rich guy in this situation. And then we also have the scenario where we have Rhodey. And Rhodey is a character who very distinctly like came up through the ranks. Like he, like, we don't really go into his like military history in the MCU stuff, but like in the comics, like that was his alternative to college. Like he and he enlisted and I think at the time it was like a Vietnam War kind of situation.
21:45
Red
Right.
21:46
Case
And so the sliding timescale makes it all kind of funky. Yeah, but he worked his way up to being like a top consultant for this military contractor.
21:55
Red
I think that it is very interesting that almost all of the major players in this movie are in some way a reflection of Tony because like, obviously, you know, Ivan is. He's got his brilliance, but is using it for like evil. And then friggin roadie, like you said, is mirroring, you know, his role as Iron man because Rhodey's really good at using the suit like a worthy successor from Tony's perspective. And of course there's Hammer, who is. This is the reflection of like the Stark Expo Persona is the way were categorizing it. Because in Iron Man 1 it's very visible when Tony is switching into Expo mode and is just putting on the show. And were sort of noting like what scenes are we seeing real Tony and what scenes are we seeing him putting on a performance.
22:33
Red
And that carries over into this movie. They introduce him in Stark Expo mode when he is in maximum like flash and shiny and like, look at me, I'm so smart. Look at my perfectly pressed three piece suit under the Iron man suit. I'm such a genius. And then at the end of that scene, blood toxicity 19% and we're like he was faking the entire time because that's what's really going through his head. So Hammer is a mirror of that version of Tony. He thinks that version of Tony. Tony is the important real part because he doesn't have the brilliance that Vanko has and he doesn't have the heart that Rhodey has of the ability to be Iron Man. So he's just so annoying. He's just. The money. Yeah, just the money in the suits.
23:10
Blue
This is a little on the nose. It's like this. The most important part of Nikola Tesla is that everybody thought he was cool. Got it. I'll copy that exclusively.
23:18
Red
You could be talking about anybody.
23:19
Blue
I could be talking about anybody who's in this movie.
23:22
Red
Anybody? Anybody? Anybody? Yeah. No. I think it is quite interesting because there's a, I think there's a way this movie could have braided those together because they're all there. You know, all these threads of like Tony is basically in a, in a mirror maze all movie. He's just seeing all these versions of himself coming at him from every side. And I, I don't know, I think there was a way they could have tied them together in a more smooth format. And they didn't really do that. Everything is just kind of happening all at once.
23:48
Case
Yeah, it is a little unfortunate how that happens. And the movie, the criticisms of this movie are that it feel particularly in the second act and that makes a lot of sense because we haven't talked about the other thing that really comes up, which is SHIELD really comes to be a big player in it all. And particularly in Act 2, specifically the second half of Act 2, because that's where Nick Fury shows himself and where Natalie is revealed to actually be Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow.
24:18
Red
It's a fun twist. It's a very fun way to do it. But it is kind of funny that it really feels like Natasha is a fully different character in every movie. The thing is, in this one, it's justifiable because she's on mission. This is her job. She's doing Black Widow things.
24:33
Blue
It's her equivalent of the Stark Expo Persona.
24:35
Red
Exactly. Yeah. So I have actually got very few problems with the way she's characterized in this movie. I think she's fun and it's a solid way to introduce her as like, you are on the side of a completely different Black Widow mission. You are not even the most complicated thing. There's something I kind of like about that Tony is a secondary issue to she. Like, Nick Fury's taken time out of the day to make sure this guy doesn't drink himself into an early grave because he might be useful, while at the same time he's dealing with a space God in New Mexico state over. He's gotta be so busy. And it's like I'm pulling Black Widow off of whatever deep infiltration mission she's doing to go play hot secretary to this rich asshole. Because it's that important to me.
25:16
Case
Yeah. Although I do have this note about this movie that. That one of the things I really regret about Phase one moving into Phase two is that they lost the focus on the energy wave, that Iron man was sort of like the. The lead focus of, like this like, clean energy thing by way of the arc reactor. It's even a point in Avengers 1, but it's certainly a point in. In Iron Man 1 and something of a point in Iron Man 2. But in Avengers 1, he's like, oh, now Stark Tower is on its own clean. Like, it's off the grid. It's on its own clean energy. And it's like a bastion for or like it's a symbol for what the rest of the world can be like.
25:53
Red
Yeah.
25:53
Case
And ever since Phase one has ended, they have not talked about, like, clean energy or any of the revolutionary technology that Iron man is trying to contribute to the world in any way, shape or form. Like, because they have to. They have to keep it sort of status quo with the world.
26:08
Red
I have a theory about that. And it's actually a little bit almost in opposition to that because you're absolutely right. But I. I do think that at the time that those movies were coming out clean Energy was. See, there was a much bigger pushback against its viability. I remember there was all these. Because this is still a thing that people do sometimes complain about where they're like, oh, you know, wind farms are, like, bad for birds maybe, you know.
26:28
Case
Whales, apparently, according to Trump these days, who the.
26:31
Blue
They jump and then they just get cut in half.
26:33
Red
It's crazy. That's why you don't see whales on the land. It's. I mean, they're keeping them down there. So all that bullshit, like. But that's. That's fucking crazy people, okay? Like, back in the day, there were people who were legitimately, like, look, this would be nice, but right now it doesn't have the output. You know, at the time, solar panels weren't seen as like, a viable replacement. Replacement nuclear power, there was still more like, you know, there's still some anxiety about it, but like, it was just a much less, like, established technology. So the idea of, like, we can find a clean energy that replaces our dependence on oil and gas, that would be great. And in the last, like, decade or so, I've fully seen most of that pushback just kind of dissolve.
27:09
Red
Because a lot of clean energy tech has just been quietly improving and, you know, more grid. Have been relying on it. There have been grids that, like, overproduce more electricity than they need from clean sources.
27:18
Blue
Right.
27:18
Red
It's just quietly become a completely viable thing that is actually just growing as it gets installed in more places in the world with no trouble. So I think that at the time, it was like, oh, what a beautiful dream it would be if we get the arc reactor equivalent of, I don't know, cold fusion. And nowadays it's like, actually, solar is fine. Solar and wind is actually fine and doing a lot of good work. And this is less of a pipe dream now. It's just reality.
27:40
Blue
That's fair. I feel like what I've also experienced outside of the MCU in film, and we might be getting on too far a tangent, we reel it in a second, but whenever someone has some light, like, amazing, you know, clean energy utopia, it, like, runs on dead children.
27:56
Red
And, yeah, they always pull an omela.
27:58
Blue
Yeah, it's like, it's always what has. Like, we have this amazing technology is actually poisoning the ground around you, and the guy who's in charge of it is bad. Like, I was watching Superman and Lois and, like, the whole thing is like this. This amazing, like, clean technology, like, underground. We're going to harvest this, like, kryptonite stuff. It's like, oh, it's actually. It's poisoning everyone. I think I remember Kryptonite.
28:20
Red
What a shock.
28:20
Blue
I might be. I might be conflating a couple things, but outside of the mcu, I feel like where those plot lines do come in, it's like, oh, actually, it's like, cover for something bad because this is so good, it can't possibly be true.
28:33
Red
Too good to be true. Yeah.
28:34
Blue
I also wonder if within the mcu, part of the thing is that a movie franchise kind of loses the ability to make sweeping changes to its. Its world, especially if it's.
28:47
Case
Yeah, we're doing well. That's what I was saying about the status quo ness of the world. Yeah.
28:50
Blue
Where, like, you can kind of play at that for a few movies. But after movie four, it's like, is this still just on the horizon? Like, is it everywhere now? Or is it, like, did it not work? And I feel like they eventually decided to be like, yeah, forget it.
29:05
Case
Well, the way they pivot is that after Avengers 1, Iron man, and specifically Tony becomes focused on this whole, like, exterior threat scenario. And so his through line is less about the energy craze that he was or the energy wave that he was creating. Even though. God damn it, the arc reactor is a miniature version of the space stone. Like, that's what he's creating in that situation. It's based on the hydrotech, which is just pulling power from the space stone, and he's figured out a way to create it. That's why Thor's hammer is able to power his armor in Avengers 1, because it's all using the same sort of weird fucking space tech.
29:42
Red
I'm still mad that they didn't do the thing where Thor uses the lightning to repower his suit and arc reactor at the end of the movie. And they just have the Hulk yell at him real loud. I'm like, oh, you sacrificed a thing that would make sense for a punchline. That doesn't. Cool, man. But no, I think I. I think there's a lot of different reasons why it kind of got sidelined. I also think that probably the only reason it's in that movie is not because they were using it to, like, put forward, like, wow. Yeah. Tony wants to, like, change the world with clean energy. I think it was so they could set up, oh, a beacon of hope for all mankind so that Loki could do a thing with it later. Because it's not about the clean energy.
30:13
Red
It's about a big tower with Tony's name on it. We had like a whole Talk about the way that Tony's characterization in Avengers is like flipping wildly between he's in Stark Expo mode, he's in kind of legitimate Tony mode, but mostly he's in Stark Expo mode because that was when Whedon got his mitts on him. And it seems like he, like Justin Hammer thought that Stark Expo Tony was the important one. This is a whole separate thing. But I do think that it's interesting that the idea that the superheroes could be working to change the world for the better disappears after Avengers and it just becomes running damage control. And when Tony does try to change the world for the better, he does it by putting autonomous killer drones in sovereign nations he has no jurisdiction for and getting in trouble about it.
30:49
Red
So like they do kind of do the you can't change the world for the better, you'll get in trouble about it kind of thing.
30:54
Case
That goes back to what is maddening about this movie, which is so they kind of COVID it at the very end where all the drones blow up. But the US military and Justin Hammer both have up close experience with arc reactors. Like they make a point of Rhodey taking the working arc reactor from the Mark 2 away before Hammer gets his hands on the Mark 2 armor and turns it into the war machine armor. But he at least has in his files what Vanko is working on with his like knockoff arc reactors. And this gets into this thing of like the world at the end of this movie should be starting things like the armor wars which yeah, we're eventually getting the MCU like TV show, like the Disney plus TV show on that one. Doubt supposedly.
31:40
Case
Yeah, sure, maybe, yeah, like led by roadie on this whole situation. But like honestly the world should be changing a lot from this movie going forward and they conveniently sweep it under the rug bug. And this is why I want to circle back to the energy thing being important. Because at. In Iron Man 1 it feels like the armor is almost a secondary like afterthought. Like yes, there's some tech that he like figures out in terms of like the repulsor tech for allowing him to fly and things like that. But the armor as a whole is the afterthought to creating the power source that allows it to function. The fact that, I mean like for example Hammers drones, we see them like have, are like wired at the beginning. Like so like they're getting power from some sort of exterior source.
32:25
Case
But like the fact that everyone seems to be focused on like well, we have to make robots that are just as cool is the same situation that Justin Hammer has with the Iron man or with Tony Stark in general. Like, it's like, oh, the robot suits the cool part. But no, it's the powering of the robot suit that is the really cool part. And that's the really break. Like the big breakthrough that should be changing the world exponentially. Like in the mcu. At the very least, with the gap that we have had from Infinity War to Endgame, there should have been, like, some kind of big spike. But no, we've apparently reset, like, time just even though half the world blipped away.
33:01
Red
Yeah, yeah, I think.
33:03
Case
Sorry, this is. I didn't intend for this to be me venting about the mcu.
33:07
Red
It's good outlet for it. I. I will say, I think that Iron Man 2 establishes a few things, and then later movies do nothing with them. And a lot of them are, like, interesting through lines in this movie that make it, like, halfway through and then kind of don't get picked up. Because you're right. Like, a lot of people have seen up close how the arc reactor works. And obviously the. The simple explanation for why that didn't change the world is like, well, Tony is this, like, turbo genius. He's the only one who knows exactly how to make it work.
33:30
Case
And the thing is, it also requires radioactive material. We should.
33:33
Red
Yeah, that too, but. But, like, the thing is, like, he's. That's his defense at the beginning of the movie. His defense is, you can't have my Iron man technology because I am the only person in the world smart enough to make it so nobody but me needs it. And then Ivan shows up with his own suit and blows that idea out of the water. Tony is now learning. Learning. He may be the smartest person in most rooms, but he's not the smartest person on Earth. And now that he's shown that this is possible, a lot of other super scientists are going to figure out how to do something like that. He's essentially raised the floor of the playing field, but it's not gonna stay, you know, to his advantage for long.
34:11
Red
And this is a really interesting concept, and we don't see anything done with it. And I think. Not to pull a third thing to complain about into this. I do think some of this is because Tony. Tony, simply because of the meta narrative that the Iron man, the first Iron man movie, was the most successful thing in the. In Phase One, before Avengers. The fact that Tony metanarratively became Marvel's specialist boy means that the whole universe kind of warped around him to keep him being Marvel's specialist boy, even in context where, narratively, it doesn't really make sense for Tony to be setting the power curve in this situation. So the idea that Tony is the specialist boy who is the only person on Earth who can do this, is immediately disproven with the existence of Ivan.
34:51
Red
And then Hammer's, like, struggling to catch up, and he's not able to do it, but he can at least hire and, like, break the guy out who can and make the. The Hammer droids a real, actual threat.
35:00
Blue
How many people's spines do I have to twist in half to accomplish this?
35:04
Red
Right.
35:05
Case
I love when he's like, that guy survived. That guy survived.
35:07
Blue
He survived, by the way.
35:08
Red
But the thing is, like, that plants this idea that Tony is going to have to start dealing with a bunch of other people who are just as creative as he is and almost as smart, and that's to going to need, like, kind of maybe kick off this arms race situation. And that could have been interesting, and we just never get it. Like, they could have been doing that thing they often do, like, in Earth's mighty steroids, like, Hydra has robot suits and big robots and threats like that. That seems like the kind of thing that somebody who's seen the Iron man suit flying around might be able to build with a lot of technology and no concern for safety regulations.
35:38
Red
We just don't really get that Hydra continues to be this very, like, you know, sort of, like, weirdly realistic infiltration system rather than guys in big robot suits. And we never get the part of this that turns into a superhero kind comic where everyone starts pulling out ridiculous technology and having big fights with it. And so I guess just the point I was making is just that, like, this is an interesting thing that is planted in Iron Man 2 and not even paid off kind of within the confines of Iron Man 2, because by the end, it's like, well, we killed the one guy who made an arc reactor, so I guess we're fine forever. And then they just took that at face value and made it fine forever.
36:10
Case
Yeah. Apparently, like, this game breaking technology that is going to just change the world is dead with. With Tony.
36:18
Red
Yeah. This is a weird thing to think about.
36:21
Case
Yeah. Hey, so I want to talk to the two of you specifically about a thing I noticed on this rewatch that made sense to bring up, because the last time I was talking to the two of y' all was I was over on your podcast talking about Superman, which is that this Movie reminds me a lot about Superman 2025. Specifically the nature of the pitching the military drones felt a lot like Planet Watch. It just happens a lot later. And the nature of the character, sort of like living on to become his own villain and lose the public trust feels very apiece to Superman in terms of just the big beats. Now Tony leans more into it by getting either drunk or poisoned and getting in the suit and wrecking havoc at his birthday party.
37:04
Case
But he does do a monster scream and scares a bunch of people in it. And that is not what Superman does, but it's what people perceive Superman to do when. When his like spoiler for the new movie but like when the message from his parents like is dropped.
37:22
Red
Yeah, it's interesting, I think that there's like a weird little inversion point between those movies because when I watched Iron Man 2 for the first time, I was surprised by the fact that Tony basically retains good publicity throughout even when he is at his most self destructive. The only people who are like this isn't good, dude, are Pepper and Rhodey, the two people who actually care about him. Everyone else likes the show. Like he has to do a lot of work to get those people out of his house. And I thought that was so interesting because ties in with the part that I actually like most about this movie, which is Tony's unique brand of inability to be vulnerable because he is profoundly self destructive all movie and nobody can see that it's a problem except for the loved ones he's pushing away.
38:03
Red
Everyone else is cheering him on from minute one. Whereas with Superman of course, it's like, oh my God, we have reason to be scared of this guy. And now even though he's only done good things for us, we're terrified because of what might do. Whereas with Tony it's like, hey, yeah, he throws a great party. Look at him smashing those priceless antiques. It's just, it's so interesting. Like Tony's image, the Stark Expo image is so powerful that everyone is just like man, he throws a crazy party that rules even while he is actively doing the most like blatant cry for help I've ever seen. I don't know, I thought that was an interesting little point of contrast.
38:34
Blue
Yeah, I think there is. And stop me if I'm veering too far off here, but there's this call.
38:41
Case
Cannot veer too far off. We've already pushed those limits about as far as we can push.
38:46
Blue
There's an interesting phenomenon that happens around people who are rich and, or successful enough where anything they do reinforces the Persona of they're so cool and smart. And it's interesting seeing this happening with Tony and not with Justin Hammer. Because the comparison that I have in my mind is like when crypto fraudster Sam Bankman Fried was playing League of Legends in boardroom meetings like FTX instead of like doing his job, and all the investors were like, oh my God, he's like a gamer and plays video games in his boardroom meetings. He was stuck in hard bronze the entire time, apparently. And it's like he can be doing the most insanely stupid thing, but if it fits some narrative of like he's just a savant and we can't actually understand his brilliance, everyone will be like, no, he's.
39:34
Blue
It's actually all part of the plan, you guys. It's part of the routine. He's actually just, we're not on his level. He's so smart. I feel like that's a little bit of what's happening with Tony. Like he's just so eccentric. Destroying his house. And then Justin Hammer tries to be funny. Everyone's like, dude, shut up, stop. You don't have the sauce. Well then you're embarrassing yourself.
39:53
Case
For that situation to be on full display in this movie that we didn't know at the time, but to have an Elon Musk. Yeah, like talk about someone who everyone just sort of was like, oh, he must be good. This kind of stuff. He must be a savant. And in this movie he's like, I have an idea for an electric jet which would be great if you actually created it.
40:12
Red
He actually didn't even do that. It's been 13 years. Where is it? No, I think it's very interesting because like the thing that you're basically describing is like the first 90% of the emperor's New Clothes. Because like the whole premise of that is that most people will believe that a person who is like successful in some metric must therefore know what they're doing at all times. And therefore anything they're doing that seems not to make sense is actually just all part of the plan. And then it sometimes takes a little kid being like, he's got no clothes on for you to be like, wait a minute, is he stupid? Actually and the thing with Tony is that he really is that smart. He is genuinely an eccentric genius. But that doesn't mean he's immune to extremely self destructive tendencies.
40:54
Red
And also I think some of it is just groupies, like the kind of people who go tony Stark's birthday party are probably, like, super fans, so it makes sense that none of them would be like, oh, no, is he okay? It's like, shut up, man. Megan, you're gonna get us unhappy invited. So it makes a lot of sense. It's just, I think, very interesting because it plays into the fascinating rolling tragedy of a character arc. He has this movie where he just cannot stop, like, isolating himself whilst at the same time manipulating these two people he cares about to be able to fill his shoes when he dies in, like, two weeks, as far as he's concerned.
41:26
Case
Right?
41:26
Red
Because he can't tell them, hey, I'm dying, and that's why I'm being like this. But instead, he can manipulate Rhodey into thinking that becoming War Machine is Rhodey's idea and just hand the keys to the kingdom to. To Pepper and be like, good luck. Have fun. I'm just being rich and eccentric. Don't even worry about it, you know, as he's, like, getting his affairs in order and signing his will. And I. I don't know. I find a character who's brilliant but socially very poorly managed, a very interesting combination. Like, he's so smart and so charismatic in certain circumstances, but he can't be vulnerable to save his life, literally. So he has to.
41:59
Case
Like, when Rhodey's like, what is the weird thing on your neck? He's like, it's road rash. What?
42:04
Red
Yeah, he literally can't tell him. And there's something so deeply tragic to me of, like, he would literally rather die than tell his friends what's going on. And there's a. There's a line he says a couple times in the movie where it's like, people keep being surprised, but I'm actually very good at what I do. And that's like, the core of the way he's treating Rhodey and Pepper in this movie is like, they think he's just being ridiculous and uncontrollable, but he is actually maneuvering them into position so that they will carry on his legacy and all most important ways when he's gone and he's not telling them. Yeah, not. And, like, the fact that it's like, yeah, he could solve a lot of these problems by telling them. It's like, yeah. And it's. But he won't.
42:40
Red
Is the thing like, that's not a plot hole. That's characterization. Yeah, I love that. That's probably my favorite part of the movie is truly just that it makes Tony into such an interesting character just by drawing on things he already had in Iron Man 1. He was shit at communicating there too.
42:54
Case
Yeah, like, you guys brought up in your voice memo, the strawberry thing. And like, that's, I think, such a, a great example of Tony being bad at communicating, but at the same time being very smart. Like, he. As a scene, it does very well, but at the same time, the. The mundane detail of, like, there's a connection between Pepper and strawberries. Doesn't. Doesn't matter.
43:21
Red
Yeah, it's entirely for character. It doesn't serve the plot even slightly, but it's really good for character.
43:26
Case
Yeah. And it's a, like, it's extra stuff to shoot in that one. Like, he doesn't just like walk in with strawberries. He, like, stops and gets the strawberries. Are you Iron Man? We love you.
43:36
Red
He sort of drives out, pays for it with an extremely expensive watch, which is also good for characterization because it signifies, like, he's kind of still self destructing. He's being like, obviously he's probably pretty generous with his money normally because he has too much of it. He doesn't really care. But that's the kind of thing that you do when you really don't care. And it's just, it's an impulse buy because he had a simple little like, oh, yeah, there's a connection between Pepper and strawberries. I'll figure it out later. It's like, it was bad. It was a bad connection. My. My b. He's kind of floundering.
44:08
Blue
It's also, in a way, it's cute because it's not like, oh, I need to get something for Pepper. Oh, yeah, strawberries. That's right.
44:13
Red
It's.
44:13
Blue
He sees the strawberries and thinks of Pepper.
44:15
Red
Thinks of Pepper. Yeah, because there's a connection. You. Yeah, it's just. He's so interesting. And this is part of what drove me at the wall. When we watched this movie for the first time, I was like, man, I really like this version of Tony. Where the hell did he go? And it's another part of like, I think he really suffers from becoming the gravity will that the rest of the Marvel universe orbits around. Because Tony on his own is a very fascinatingly, like, Messy. Yeah.
44:39
Blue
They let him be messy.
44:40
Red
Calling him flawed, I think isn't helpful. Even though that's the first word that came to mind. Because, like, everyone's like, oh, gold. Characters should have flaws. It's like, yeah, but Tony's more flaw than man at this point. I. And that's what makes him fun. Like, listen, the thing he has going for him is that he is a truly brilliant inventor. He can make things that most other people can't. And most other people can only make them after they've seen him do it first to prove that it's possible. Like that he's a pioneer, he's a trailblazer. He is abysmal at socializing with people. He can't be vulnerable. He self medicates for everything. And he is very smart. He can manipulate people into doing the things he wants them to do, but he can't, cannot just talk to them.
45:15
Red
And that's a fascinating suite of issues to give to this guy. But at some point he just turns into Stark Expo Tony. Most of the time he becomes this very like, he's the genius billionaire, playboy, philanthropist quip man. And that is not as interesting to me. And then In Iron Man 3, they sort of try to walk it back. They're like, he's deeply traumatized, actually. He's, he's all fucked up from being in space a little bit and nearly dying. Dying. And, and now he's freaking out about it and trying to go to therapy. But we're gonna make a joke about it because who actually goes to therapy? And it's like, wow, you guys are handling this so well. He's so interesting.
45:50
Red
And, and at that point, he's so firmly entrenched as the center of the Marvel universe that everything has to be about him specifically. And even when he's objectively in the wrong, we have to make it all about him still. And, and it's just, it's. He doesn't have any room. He becomes too big in the frame to really like get any interesting character moments out. Pepper and Rhodey kind of get P side as we bring in the Avengers. Which means that you don't see Tony in the context of the only two people he's ever been able to be honest with. And they sort of bring in Banner and are like, these guys kind of understand each other. And like, the one thing I did like about him in Avengers is that he likes Banner from minute one.
46:25
Red
Everyone else he could take or leave but Banner, he's like, hey, I really love how you turn into a giant green rage monster. And you initially think he's being flippant and then you learn like, no, he actually really is a huge fan of how he turns into a giant green rage monster. He thinks that's really cool. He thinks that there's a more to the Hulk than Banner does he. He's like, if. Oh my gosh, I keep forgetting her name. His. His Hulk's girlfriend in the movie.
46:45
Case
Betty Rowan.
46:46
Red
Yeah, if Betty Ross is Hulk's number one fan, Tony is Hulk's number two fan. And I just think that's really charming. And then that kind of also falls by the wayside, mostly because they clearly didn't know what to do with the Hulk. So it's just Iron Man 2.
47:00
Case
You bring up an interesting point. Because I was thinking about this detail. Watching this movie, specifically the. The Stark Expo stuff. I was thinking about how similar Tony and Steve Rogers are actually. And in Avengers 1, both of them respond to the Hulk in very positive ways and no one else does.
47:20
Red
Yeah, yeah. Everyone else is terrified.
47:22
Blue
Steve is nice to Banner. He's just so polite and calm and pleasant with him.
47:28
Red
And when Hulk actually comes through, Steve just gives him an order and he listens to it. And like, there's been more compelling interactions between the Hulk and Steve. I'll always go to bat for the version of the Spidey's Heroes where the perfect exchange where Steve is like, you know, back in my day we had a word for people like you. And Hulk's like, what's that? And he goes, hero. And Hulk is like, never mind. I would now take a bullet for this man. And it's great. They're ride or die from that point forward and it rules. You don't get so much of that. Again, I think so much of it suffers from the fact that Avengers is just like the one liner bonanza. So a lot of characterization suffers in service of the good joke that the guy thought of. So you get edited.
48:04
Red
Hulk smash. So like, we don't get any interesting characterization. It's like, how about you do that thing you're good at? And Hulk's like, yeah, let's do it. So I don't know, there's a lot of different elements. I kind of feel like watching Iron Man 2 I felt something similar to when we watched Winter Soldier where were like, wow, they planted so many cool ideas in this and then did nothing with them. So, like, there's nothing wrong with this movie. It's just you see all these dangling threads that never went anywhere and you're like, why? Why couldn't we just follow these to their natural conclusions? It would have been fun.
48:33
Case
I would push back because there's so much that is set up for Avengers in this movie.
48:37
Red
Oh, I mean, I'm not counting those parts. Those Obviously got paid off. I meant the other stuff, but yeah.
48:42
Case
But to finish my point on Captain America being similar to Iron man in a lot of ways, the presentation aspect, like the performative aspect of the character is, I think, undervalued across the board. Like, Captain America learns to be this uso, like, give big speeches, and Iron man is just naturally good at these kind of things. And they both have a bit of rah, patriotism going for them, like, throughout this whole thing. And it never, like, clicked for me just like, how similar a demographic they were. Like, both, like, definitely made for sure. Like the Captain America and the Iron man of the MCU at the times that they came out, you know.
49:22
Red
Well, they're both aspirational sciences heroes. Steve has kind of, I think, suffered from a little bit of weird cultural drift because at the time, the idea that you could use drugs to get strong was like a cool thing. And now it's kind of become like, oh, like steroids. Yeah, we know about those. You're not allowed to have them. It's like, good to know.
49:40
Blue
We legally cannot acknowledge the fact that all of our actors are juicing.
49:44
Case
There was an extremely awkward period in the 90s where they had. Captain America was like all the super soldier serum was bled out of him and then it was starting to, like, go. Go bad on his. On his system. So he was like, still buff as hell, but like, his. His stamina, like, was like, super down and so forth. And it was all like part of this era of trying to be like, no, he's Captain America regardless of the drug in his system.
50:06
Sam
Right.
50:07
Red
It is funny that they have to keep doing that where it's like, listen, Steve Rogers is always going to be a hero, but he kind of needs to be buffed to be Captain America. I'm sorry, it's simply the way of things. But no, I think, you know, with Tony, he's. He's a very classic, like, you know, pulp science hero. Like, you build yourself a suit of armor and the armor can do cool shit. And with Steve, he's a different kind of science hero with the magic of this scientific thing that gives you power, you know, like the Fantastic Four science heroes, sort of. It's like cosmic rays. They're things in space that can do weird shit. What if they gave you elemental themed superpowers? If you really squint? So Steve was like that. It's like. And so they're both very like you.
50:44
Red
Your powers have been in some way created. And with Tony, it's like, he made them himself. And with Steve, it's like somebody else made them and gave them to him. It's a little bit different. They do serve as very interesting foils to each other because they have so many core similarities, but also these key points of contrast. Like you said, you know, Tony's a natural performer, and Steve is very much not. Steve is kind of honestly down. Yeah, he definitely has. Although you kind of get the impression that all of Steve's most important speeches come from the heart.
51:10
Sam
Yeah.
51:11
Red
And even when he's at maximum Captain America, he can still kind of, like, get switched into, like, oh, I need to fold up and do a little corner and hide from this social situation I'm not prepared for. Mostly when he gets flirted with, which I think is very cute. But you do get this odd situation where, like, Tony is very good at putting on a show and Steve is kind of just Steve all the way down. And that sincerity is often what moves people, whereas with Tony, it's usually the show that moves people. And he's so bad at being honest, because when he is honest, involved, vulnerable, he frequently is misunderstood.
51:43
Red
And I think that's a very interesting little facet of Tony's personality is that, like, he has to put on the show because every time we see him being honest, which is mostly with Pepper or roadie, it doesn't go well. You know, something happens. There's a miscommunication somewhere, or, like, he puts his foot in it and they get upset. And, like, there. I described him at one point in the little voicemail files as, like, Tony is kind of hard to love sometimes. And I think that's. That's a very. It's. It's a cruel way to put it. So it's a good thing he's a fictional character and I'm not hurting anyone's feelings. But, like, I think it's such an interesting way to characterize him is that, like, Tony is a difficult person to get close to a lot of the time. And Steve is kind of.
52:19
Red
Not in a lot of ways, at least when he's written by somebody who likes and understands how it works. But. But, yeah, no, I think there's interesting contrast. I mean, obviously, the. The dynamic they both have with Howard Stark is like something that they start playing up in later movies about. Like, Tony's been chasing Dad's approval for ever, whereas Steve and Howard were just fully besties and, like, clearly left a big impression. And Howard was like, that guy was what a. What a hero. A real aspirational. Figure for somebody to develop a complex about if I was raising them. So. No, it's an interesting point.
52:50
Red
It's part of why, when those two are well written, they have some of the most interesting dynamics because they're coming at the world from the same point of view in a lot of ways, at a completely different point of view in others.
52:59
Blue
Yeah, I do think all the talk of Tony's character is so interesting. As much as Iron Man 1 is a perfect movie, this has a much more interesting angle on Tony because in a way, we get to see a lot more of him. The movie is bloated with other things getting in the way, but we get to see Tony in more different difficult situations than the first movie puts him in. He's basically. He's in one moment mode for the entire first act of the movie after the first scene when he gets blown up. And then he's kind of doing a few different things over the course of the rest of the movie. Basically, to see Tinkerer in a hostile situation, Tinkerer at home, I'm gonna decide to be Iron man on purpose.
53:43
Blue
Okay, Now I gotta go fight the big bad guy and then intercut with Pepper throughout this movie lets him be on the back foot for most of the runtime. And I think that allows for more interesting moments of characterization to take place. Yet to bring us back to another pass ness of it all, there is a lot that is obscuring that and getting in the way and kind of clunking up the scene order and the audience's kind of emotional acknowledgment of what's going on in this movie.
54:16
Case
Which is a shame, because I have a note here that I want to talk about how good this movie looks.
54:21
Red
Yeah.
54:21
Case
Like looking at modern MCU movies and looking at modern blockbusters where there's just so much like. There's so much crunch on, like, the special effects teams and everything. Like. Oh, yeah, I was thinking about this during the. The two, like the Iron man versus War Machine fight that occurs where it looks pretty goddamn good.
54:38
Blue
It's pretty goddamn good.
54:40
Case
Like the. The effects of like two armored men, like, breaking through like a sheet of glass. And to have like all these like physical things to like, deal with. Like. Yeah, the Mark II is like, way shinier than like real metal would be in any sort of cont. Conceivable. Conceivable way.
54:55
Blue
Yeah.
54:55
Case
But it's just a, like a really well realized sequence. And then the end of the movie, Act 3, I have notes about because it is like the. The action of the. The drones. And I. I have to say, the Hammer drones, I really like that they have the. The different military, like, designs to them. I think it gives them, like, some, like, additional character then. Yeah. Like, oh, here's our marines, here's our Navy, here's our Air Force, here's our army. Like, it. It gave them, like, kind of cool designs to them. The whole fl. Like the dog fight, that happens really good. And it's being juxtaposed with the. The Black Widow infiltration of the Hammer, tech of the Hammer location, like, which has great choreography.
55:35
Case
Aside from the fact that every time I watch it, I just convinced that she's just sliding around on the floor because, like, Hammer facilities, loves those, like, white floors that, like, she just seems to be like, sliding around on her knees around and just like, taking people out.
55:49
Blue
It's all ice down there, actually.
55:51
Case
Yeah.
55:52
Red
Yeah. Well, you see, heard that, like, it's good for morale to have, like, whimsical things in your work environment. So he just made the floor at ice rink. And everyone has to deal with that now. Yeah, I think that the final battle is brilliant because, listen, there is nothing better for fight choreography than one million robots. Like, when in doubt, throw one million robots in there. You will have infinite cool potential. You can have robots with weird extra weapons. You can have your people doing crazy shit to them that you couldn't do with a person that has, like, stuff on the inside. Robots, you can do whatever you want. The fact that this, like, one of the fight scene in the Cherry Garden was choreographed by Gendy Tartakovsky. Least surprising news I've ever heard.
56:31
Red
Of course, the Samurai Jackman let him fight 1 million robots. Of course that's what he did.
56:37
Case
That is amazing because that I. I have a note that I just love the kill box setup for. For them when they. When they finally deprogram Rhodey. And it's just like, o, we have to not be standing here. This is the kill box. And then all of a sudden, all the drones just land around them.
56:52
Red
It's like, great. Well, now we have to fight them in this sick Japanese garden setup. And like, we got to see the previs for that Gendy still had when were at C2E2 2020 in February, right before COVID Before, like, it was in the news cycle already, but it hadn't yet gotten that.
57:08
Blue
What's that about?
57:08
Red
Yeah, but like, we saw the previs and then we got to compare it to the final fight. And in the previs. There's like a couple bits where Tony does the patented Genndy Tartakovsky 1 million abdomen punches maneuver. And then in the final version, it's just a repulsor blast. Because Tony is not a 1 million punches kind of.
57:22
Case
He hits hard. He doesn't. He doesn't hit a lot.
57:24
Red
Yeah, but you could tell as soon as you saw that. It's like, oh, yeah. This is for sure a Gendi production.
57:29
Blue
This is the second draft of the Clone Wars Mace Windu versus the Mace.
57:33
Case
Windu versus 1 million robots.
57:34
Red
Yeah, exactly. Genndi Tartakovsky is right about one choreography thing for sure, and that is 1 million robots. They will always make a fight. And like the final act of this movie, two Ironmen versus 1 million robots. It rules. It's awesome.
57:47
Case
Yeah. And one of those Ironmen has a machine gun that operates independently of the rest of his actions. And, like, need to call out that detail where it's like clearly just like different peripheral appendages operating in different directions is so fucking perfect for War Machine. Like, I remember seeing that and being like, oh, it's not just like his line of sight. It like literally is an independently functioning thing because he is a war machine.
58:11
Red
Like, yeah. And there's a really cool little bit in there where it's. It's during the dog fight when he's still under Vanko's control and Tony is.
58:20
Blue
Pulling off, which is such a cool thing, by the way. Like, as choreography, to have him be like, locked in a box, essentially, that is.
58:29
Red
There's no buttons in here. I can't do anything.
58:31
Blue
Resume.
58:32
Red
But the fact that he, like, Tony's pulling off these crazy hairpin turns and he's outmaneuvering the other. And it's like every time they bring up the fact that Tony knows this technology better than anyone, it's so good in. In movie one, it was the de icing problem. And in this and the fact that he can actually aim without the targeting computer, whereas Iron Monger is like missing by miles because he has to actually use his eyeballs to aim. Whereas Tony has stress tested every part of it. So he's actually really good at handling it. So he can pull off this maneuverability better than War Machine.
59:05
Sam
Yeah.
59:05
Red
It's a small thing, but it makes the choreography so much more exciting because you're like, I understand why he can do that. I understand why he's able to actually make this work in a way that Rhodey can't or that Vanko can't, while he's controlling him. And also this scene has the sort of cathartic conclusion on Tony's arc in this movie, which is the big zoom call they're all on, where, like, all of this information that he has not been sharing is just out there where Widow's like, oh, it seems like you're doing a lot better now that you're not dying of palladium poisoning. And Pepper's like, I'm sorry, what? It's like, I'm later. Explain later. Because, like, suddenly all of his actions are recontextualized in the eyes of his friends. And I think it's almost like a. It's.
59:44
Red
It's a dream for all of the people who are bad at communicating and kind of just wish everybody who cared about them would just know immediately what secret torments are making them act like kind of a jerk today. And the whole, like, oh, my God, you've been dying this whole time and you didn't tell us. You're such an asshole. And also so very poor, like, peak. It's the ideal scenario. There's something very cathartic about all that. And then it ends with them all on the rooftop together, just sort of all friends again. It's like, yes, beautiful. This is the right way to end this story. And also 1 million robots. So, like, you know, it's perfect. It's everything I could want out of a finale for a movie.
01:00:15
Case
I mean, I have a weird note about this one, which is I realized that they win the fight with a high five.
01:00:20
Blue
Yes.
01:00:21
Red
I mean, it's across the room, but, yeah, it's the ranged high five.
01:00:25
Blue
It's a classic, you know, establish some kind of. Of, like, action that your characters can do in Act 2, bring it back in Act 3, but then have it be good this time.
01:00:34
Red
Crossing the street.
01:00:34
Case
The bigger issue I have with that bit is that Vanko has his helmet off, and he, like, always has his helmet off. And I'm like, I. It made sense when you. When you just had, like, your pile of scraps that you had, like, warp worked together into, like, a whip harness. But, like, now that you've got, like, a full armor where the. Your helmet.
01:00:53
Blue
I think he's still possessed of pride. The same pride that made him need to take down Tony and. And I need you to see that I'm the one who's killing you.
01:01:02
Case
He.
01:01:02
Blue
He hasn't let that go. Even if he tries to, you know, play it cool with his bird and his hammer hanger working on stuff. I think you're Right. It's suboptimal, but I think it's because he's too damn proud.
01:01:12
Red
Listen, I gotta say, as a side note, I promise this is directly relevant. I finally got Blue to watch through. One's a full metal alchemist. And you know how greed never puts on the full helmet on his head even though it would make him impervious to almost all forms of attack because he's a prideful shit who likes how he looks. Exactly the same problem here. I could put on the helmet and make myself impervious to all damage, but then nobody would see my handsomeness. So yeah, I'm willing to forgive that one. I think it's very funny. Also, he probably would have died even if he had the helmet on because that point blank explosion looked really bad. But yes, it's not like he died from face to face, but like he.
01:01:44
Case
Definitely died without helmet on. It's like a thing.
01:01:47
Red
It's true. It's very true.
01:01:48
Case
So I have a note here that I just. Just to talk about the retcon that occurred where the kid that has the repulsor ray against one of the drones is supposed to be Peter Parker.
01:01:59
Red
Yeah, yeah. In the original, I mean that actor is a girl. So congratulations to Peter for his transition. But. But yeah, I mean that was a cute headcanon that people just decided to canonize. It's fine.
01:02:11
Case
Yeah.
01:02:12
Red
Oh man, there's so many good things about this movie.
01:02:14
Case
Yeah, like I really enjoy this movie in general. Like I said, the look is really good. It teases a lot of stuff. Really well, obviously. Like, look, there's the Thor trailer at the very end, which I lost my shit when I saw that in theaters because I assumed when they were talking about in the southwestern region, I thought they were talking about the Hulk.
01:02:34
Red
Oh, I see. So you were completely blindsided by the God of thunder.
01:02:37
Case
Yes, I was. A lightning just blinded me across there. So that one was fantastic. And we also get the Captain America set up with the prototype shield that you know, doesn't actually like play off for how the shield actually works, but you know, was just kind of a nice detail. I really like Howard Stark as Walt Disney in this movie.
01:03:04
Red
There's one design that they have to use for rich guys that made theme parks now. And he's always got that little mustache.
01:03:10
Blue
Yeah, yeah.
01:03:11
Red
I think that I. They did something kind of interesting with Howard, but he's in like 5% of the movie and there's not enough time to do the full thing that they want to do. With him. Because clearly Howard and Tony and Vanko and his father are supposed to be like a foil situation, right? Writ large. Like, that's clearly supposed to be the point that, like, Ivan is like, I'm doing this for my dead dad, who your dad. Over so significantly, you know, this is sins of the father shit. This is generational conflict. This is, you know, a mirror match of equals from two very different circumstances, but at the same time mirroring a one another.
01:03:44
Red
And then we get pretty minimal Howard content in the sequence that we flippantly described as Tony figures out his dad loved him and then he fixes the problem that was killing him the most.
01:03:55
Blue
Walt Disney coded thing is, I want to tell you, my son, that I love you, but all I know how to do is build theme parks. So you're gonna have to read between the lines on this one and figure it out for me.
01:04:05
Red
I'm sure. I'm confident you'll be. Listen, son, I figured out a new element. I don't know what to do with it. You don't know what to do with it, but maybe someday you'll have a use for it. So I'll build the entirety of my Epcot center around it.
01:04:17
Sam
You know, sometimes you have to build a utopia to tell your kid that you love them instead of using words.
01:04:23
Red
This is true. That's true. You know, I mean, Tony's also shit at communicating. So like, now we see where he got it from.
01:04:27
Sam
Exactly.
01:04:28
Red
And I will say, I'll also give him credit, that, like, discovering a new element, not knowing what to do with it, but thinking the atomic structure is cool and using it as a model to build a theme park from, genuinely, I could see that Tony would do that as, like, yeah, I don't really know what to do with it. But I, I, I also didn't know what to do to lay out of this. So I figured I'd solve two problems at once and just do that.
01:04:46
Blue
I liked the shape.
01:04:47
Red
Yeah. I could actually see that making sense. I will forgive the fact that it is the most, like, contrived, like, out the ass of, like, yeah, we can. The elephant that Tony needs is just, it's an epoch, it's an Epcot. He just needs to look at Epcot more and then he will, like, understand it. So we're good. But the fact that, like, that's where the Tony, like, father issues drama ends in the movie. And from this point forward, we are just in Punching One Million Robots mode. It kind of feels like that plot arc just kind of ends because they were tired of it. Especially because before that, Nick Fury's like, all right, Tony, I'm locking you in your house until you resolve the subplot. Because I'm getting sick of it.
01:05:25
Red
So it doesn't really help with the vibe that we're all sort of tired of it.
01:05:29
Case
Yeah.
01:05:30
Red
But I don't know, I. I feel like either maybe cut that part or expand it so it actually, you know, earns the screen time it has, because I guess we're getting into the fixes part of it. But, like, the idea that. That Tony and his daddy issues and Vanko and his relationship with his father are, like, so strongly contrasted with one another, it's like, you got to play that up. But we don't even see Vanko's dad very much after that very first. First, like, flashback. He's just sort of in the background of, like, he's Vanko's motivation for hating Tony, but only in the very loose sense of, like, your dad did a dick move.
01:06:02
Red
And the fact that Howard did a dick move is kind of like, oh, shit, I can't believe he, like, locked him out of this invention and fucking deported him to cover his tracks. Like, that's a huge dick movement. And then Howard's like, I love you, son. And Tony's like, no, okay, complete's been drawn. We're fine. No moral wrongdoings here. We're all good.
01:06:19
Case
Yeah. No more introspection about it. Like, it's one thing to be, like, to come to the conclusion that your dad is in the right, but at no point does Tony really spend time being like, was my dad a douchebag?
01:06:35
Red
The answer is yes, but.
01:06:36
Case
But not for the reasons you think.
01:06:38
Red
Yes.
01:06:39
Case
I have one big note that I want to hit before we take our break.
01:06:43
Red
Yes.
01:06:44
Case
And that is just the little bit of ick that I felt when I saw O'Reilly appear on screen. Screen. O'Reilly, Bill O'Reilly. Like, oh, yeah, this might be. This might be a generational thing.
01:06:53
Blue
I like Bill O'Reilly. I forgot that he's in this movie.
01:06:56
Case
Yeah.
01:06:57
Red
I have no memory of this place.
01:06:59
Case
So this might be a thing about, like, Sam and I being in our 40s and YouTube being in your 20s on. On this one, which is that Bill O'Reilly was the poster child for Fox News for so goddamn long. Yeah. The Colbert Report is directly Inspired by Bill O'Reilly. Directly.
01:07:16
Blue
Actually, like, looking at the screen. Screenshot. That's the graphics that the Colbert Report was parroting.
01:07:21
Red
Yes.
01:07:23
Blue
Wow.
01:07:24
Red
Gotcha.
01:07:25
Case
And so for him. So, like, the first movie has, like, the mad money guy, which is just like another movie.
01:07:30
Blue
Jim Cramer, I swear to God. Yeah, Jim Cramer.
01:07:32
Red
Yeah.
01:07:32
Case
I can't think of his name just to be on and like, just be like a real news person to, like, talk about Tony Stark because, like, the real world news would talk about Tony Stark because he's this billionaire playboy philanthropist who happens to have a robot suit that does a lot of incredible things. And so it makes sense that O'Reilly would be there. It doesn't quite make sense that Pepper Potts, unless she's just a Republican, would be watching him in, like, in her, like, office while, like, other, like, work stuff is going on.
01:08:02
Red
You know, she. She might be. She might be hate watching. She might be doing research.
01:08:05
Sam
I would also say that.
01:08:07
Case
And I need to say it was not as controversial at the time.
01:08:09
Sam
Yeah, I would say that. Like, that was like, not. It was also at that point we. It was definitely leaning more right, but not as far right as came. Like, the propaganda levels were not quite through the roof yet on the Fox network at that time. And honestly, it was right on the money for him because he was saying some really terrible sexist shit. So honestly, it was a pretty accurate representation of him, his brand. Brand. And a lot of business people watch Fox Business and he would end up on there too. So I guess it's just one of those things. You got to know what your opposition. I know. Know your enemy. Know yourself.
01:08:54
Case
Maybe.
01:08:54
Sam
Pepper Potts is a Republican. We don't know.
01:08:57
Case
Just a little bit of ick. I mean, Pepper Potts, like, she's a.
01:09:00
Sam
White woman who works for a billionaire. I mean, straight in.
01:09:06
Red
The question is, did she pull the ladder up after her? Like, that's really the only. That's.
01:09:10
Case
Pepper Potts is the type that would have pulled up the ladder.
01:09:14
Sam
A lot of Tony's messes.
01:09:17
Red
It's true. She was also. She slut shamed that lady in movie one. That's not very good. And then after that, the writers stopped giving her characterization and things to do. So I guess there's really no way to know.
01:09:28
Blue
Where does Pepper end and Gwyneth Paltrow begin?
01:09:33
Red
I will say one of the things that did surprise me pleasantly when were watching this earlier early wave of, like, MCU Phase 1 movies is like, oh, yeah, they. I've never been this nostalgic for the incredibly generic superhero and superheroes girlfriend love story, but I find most of these pretty compelling. Jane Foster is great. Fucking Betty Ross is great. Like, I'm If Betty Ross has zero fans, I. And the Hulk, I'm dead. That's the only explanation. But I just. I don't know, man. And then they just kind of stopped doing that. They were like, let all the girlfriends go away. Jane is back as Lady Thor, and now she's dead. Spoiler alert for love and thunder.
01:10:11
Case
Spoiler alert for a very famous, like, arc of Thor.
01:10:14
Red
Yeah, but it's like everyone's girlfriend is out of the movie and also maybe dead. And, yeah, who cares? Because all these characters are. We're doing other stuff now, except it's like they removed them and then they didn't replaced it with another character arc to take its place. So it's just a lot of other stuff. I mean, Guardians of the Galaxy had a good romance, and then they threw her off a cliff, and they were like, we got you the version with no character development. Is this just as good? And James Gunn was like, no. And I'll make you regret saying those words to me. Finally watch Guardians 3. It's really good.
01:10:42
Case
Guardians 3 is really good. Again, I. I don't mean to be like, every movie is just really good, especially considering that we just talked about.
01:10:47
Red
Like, just talked a lot of shit about a lot of movies all at once.
01:10:50
Case
Well, a lot of movies all at once. But also, like, the first time we realized movies could be bad. And I don't want to be like. Because I can't think off the top of my head of the first time I, like, thought of one that was bad. And I keep on being like, but this movie was good. But this movie was good.
01:11:01
Sam
That's okay. You're balancing us all out.
01:11:04
Red
It's true. Yeah. It's always good to have the positivity.
01:11:06
Blue
Yeah.
01:11:07
Case
So why don't we take our break now, and when we come back, we are going to discuss the things that could have been done at the time of production to make this a slightly stronger movie. Even though I think we're all coming from the standpoint of it's a muddled but, like, overall pretty good movie.
01:11:24
Blue
Where it hits. It hits. Yeah.
01:11:26
Case
Yeah. So we're going to take our break. We're going to shout out a show on our network, and when we come back, we're going to have some pitches.
01:11:38
Sam
Are you tired of watching your beloved.
01:11:40
Red
Characters being tortured by careless authors? Are you sick of feeling like they could have swapped out all of the painful action and the plot would remain untouched? Subscribe to Books that Burn, the Fortnightly Book Review Podcast focusing on fictional depictions of Trauma. We assume that the characters reactions are reasonable and focus on how badly or well they were served by their authors. Join us for our minor character spotlights, main character discussions, and favorite non traumatic things in the dark books we love. Find us on Spotify, itunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:12:11
Case
And we're back. All right, so red and blue, here's the deal. Yes, we have a. A. We have a guideline that applies to the podcast, which is that we are trying to talk about it from the perspective of the time of production. So things about, I don't know, like recasting probably wasn't going to happen. Tony Stark is the reason this movie was made. Robert Downey Jr. Is Tony Stark like that. That is like fairly set in stone. So we try not to do things that are completely outside of the scope of. Of reality. And then the hard rule we have is that I can't go before Sam, which means that the two of you are our guests. And so this is why I have a note in the outline that the two of you roam about. Who goes first?
01:12:57
Case
Because the only thing is that I'm not allowed to go first myself.
01:13:00
Blue
Cool.
01:13:00
Case
Sam can go before me. So Sam can go first and then I can be second, and then y' all can go. Or any sort of configuration there. I just can't go before Sam. So the later Sam is in the rotation, the later I have to be by default.
01:13:13
Blue
Default. Yeah.
01:13:14
Red
Gotcha. All right, so are we going to try to rock, paper, scissors through a video call and just hope that the lag doesn't make one of us just like cheat by default.
01:13:20
Blue
But for the sake of the listeners, we're going to also have to say out loud which one we pick.
01:13:25
Red
Well, we can say it like a second after we pick it. You know, provide the closed captioning.
01:13:29
Blue
All right, sure.
01:13:30
Red
All right, sure.
01:13:31
Case
So do rock, paper, scissors, shoot, and then. Then announce your call.
01:13:34
Red
Yeah, yeah, we go on shoot. Okay, so rock, paper, scissors. Scissors. Shoot scissors.
01:13:39
Blue
Again, we both did scissors. Okay.
01:13:42
Red
All right.
01:13:42
Blue
Rock, paper, scissors.
01:13:43
Red
Paper, scissors, Shoot. I did paper and you did rock, and I win. I thought two steps ahead instead of one. Oh, that means I need ideas. Okay, so I already said the thing about.
01:13:56
Case
Well, so whomever goes first, like you just pick who goes first. So you know what? Mine is the person to go first.
01:14:03
Red
Well, now I feel like I have to go first just a little bit, so find myself a little.
01:14:07
Sam
Did win.
01:14:09
Red
I did win. I feel like we should honor. I. It's. It's not too Crazy. Again, I think a lot of us are coming at this from the perspective of like, movie's fun. Like, is it the best? No. But like, you know, how much can you really change it to make it better? To like, tighten up the arcs without having to change it from the ground up? It doesn't seem to have like a glaring flaw that could be easily repaired. But I do think that pacing wise, something needs to be done about the sort of extraneous plotline around Tony's palladium poisoning and his relationship with his dad. Dad.
01:14:38
Red
Because I, as a firm fan of Tony's character arc in this movie, I think that it's very like, compelling and delightful that he has to just absolutely suffer in silence because he's terrible at communicating while still manipulating his friends into doing what he thinks is right. I think that giving him the palladium poisoning is not a bad way to do it and letting him figure out a solution to that is also a smart way to do it. I think perhaps the stuff about his dad maybe should just be cut because I, I guess I don't find Howard Stark a particularly interesting or compelling motivation for Tony. I don't think he needs a Freudian excuse of daddy issues to explain why he is like that.
01:15:13
Red
I think that having too much money and no parental figures kind of just, you can assume it does that Howard doesn't need to have been a notably good or bad father to that of to have up Tony in some way. And if we're gonna plant the idea that Howard like betrayed Vanko and like this is the sins of the father being mated on the son, you kind of have to commit to that and make that theme of the whole movie. And it really isn't. It's. It's just like you give Tony like a basic Freudian excuse of like, here's why he's like this. And then you give Vanko a Freudian excuse of here's why he hates Tony. And that's useful a little bit, but it's just extraneous enough. And then the solution is just weak enough of like, here, my son.
01:15:49
Red
I hid the design of this new element in Epcot for you. Because I can't express my love like a normal person. I have to build you theme parks. Just feels a little bit weak. And I think if we're trying to tighten up the movie, you could cut that out. You could, you know, change a little bit of the way that Tony figures out the solution to his palladium poisoning. You know, at some point the solution to that is going to be technobabble. You can change what that techno babble is.
01:16:10
Blue
Yeah.
01:16:11
Red
New element can be purified element can be weird space stone bullshit can be. You can do whatever you want.
01:16:17
Case
New isotope, whatever.
01:16:18
Red
Like, yeah. At some point you are just going to be saying science words at the screen and the audience is going to have to take your word for it. And you don't need to include his dad at that point. Point. And I can see why they did it because having seen the fact that they were also setting up Captain America at the same time, so much of the back half of this movie is like feeding directly into your. Like, oh, they could already use the set for the Stark Expo when Steve and Bucky do that double date. And oh yeah, of course you plant Howard Stark here because he only gets very briefly referenced in Iron Man 1 and then he's a major character in Captain America.
01:16:49
Red
So, like, setting that up is good, but if you're gonna do that, you need to give him a little bit more in this movie than what he had. Like, either cut him entirely or give him a little bit more to do, I think because he feels like the most extraneous part of this. Vanko is a bad guy, is fine. Hammer is a bad guy, is fine. The two of them combining to almost equal one. Tony Stark as a bad guy, also fine. I have no complaints with that. I think letting the face and the smart guy be different guys doesn't bother me. I think that's fine.
01:17:12
Red
And also, Hammer is at his best and most intimidating when he's actually dealing with Whiplash and like, sort of managing to a little bit be intimidating before it's clear that Whiplash has completely outsmarted him and has control of all the Hammer droids. And Justin is pretty much fucked. But like, I, I don't know, I just. That part doesn't bother me. It is truly just all the stuff about Howard Stark that I think frustrates me very slightly because it's a little too weak and a little too, like, rote. And if you're going to do something with that, I think you can get more interesting with it or you can just drop it and spend that time on something else instead. But I think that's kind of the only change I have, actually.
01:17:43
Case
Yeah, well, I was just going to say what I love about that is that I think this goes back to the fact that this is ultimately a fairly strong movie. And my notes are. Are also pretty minor. And so I like your thoughts there in Terms of approaching Howard, I think with Captain America down the barrel of the particular gun that they're firing, it would be hard to remove Howard Stark completely. But I agree that there should be more going on, because I like that they set him up in the first place with. It's like the hammer being like. But, you know, who was the expert? Your dad. Like that, you know, so we start thinking about the character early on, and then we kind of deal with them later. I don't know how to make him be a bigger part of Act 3.
01:18:23
Red
So I think Act 3 can. Can't touch. It's so good as it is. And they kind of sweep him off the stage as soon as Tony stops dying.
01:18:30
Case
So, yeah, maybe if the cool laser thing that he does at the end, where. Or where he, like, blows them all down is. Is linked to the. The refined element that he has.
01:18:40
Red
This one, the daddy issue, comes in.
01:18:42
Sam
A big picture of his dad. You know, like, it just forms his dad. As he hits it. He hits you with. That'd be great.
01:18:48
Case
Yeah. He just. From his. From the arc reactor, projects a hologram of Howard, and just like, it's like.
01:18:53
Sam
A Care Bear stare.
01:18:55
Case
Yeah, no, it's this, like, burning hologram. Like, it's lasers, so it's, like, burning whatever hits. But it's just a picture of his dad, and it's just the daddy issue.
01:19:03
Red
My dad. They do one of those drone shows, and it forms, like, a giant bust of Howard's face, and then all the.
01:19:10
Blue
Drones shoot lasers, reinventing Jojo stands from first principles.
01:19:13
Red
Yes.
01:19:14
Case
Is that what that is?
01:19:17
Red
Yeah. All right, my friend. Thunderstruck.
01:19:21
Case
You won the Rohambeau. You get to pick who goes next.
01:19:26
Red
I will let blue go next.
01:19:27
Blue
Okay.
01:19:28
Red
I don't want to crowd Sam out. It's just. You so clearly have things you want to say. I.
01:19:32
Blue
Well, I.
01:19:34
Sam
Leaning farther into the camera. I think we should let the listeners know. And this is how Red knows true.
01:19:41
Case
He's ready now.
01:19:42
Sam
It would be on the starting line, ready to go. So. Yes.
01:19:46
Blue
Posture. Yeah, I. I thought of this when were first, like, you know, scheduling the. The call and getting ready to do this, and I. I haven't. I haven't chewed on it much in the intervening time. I wanted to kind of, like, pitch the core concept and let us explore what it can look like, because there are a handful of different shapes it could take. But fundamentally, I think one of the problems is that our. Our two villains, although it is fun to see them interact with. With each other, kind of crowd out what the point of the movie is. And you know, the villains are physically an oppositional force, but also represent something about the hero that they need to overcome.
01:20:21
Blue
And Hammer and Vanko are interesting for Tony in different ways, but represent things that are too different from each other that it is kind of hard to see what Tony is doing that like, philosophically defeated them. And it contributes to a little bit of the crowding out of. Of. Of the second and third act especially. And, you know, Vanko ties into Howard Stark, but doesn't necessarily do anything interesting that Tony has to really deal with. And Hammer kind of acknowledges Howard Stark, but doesn't really do anything that. That contributes to it. So, Red, very much to your point, our villains don't really engage with the. The core or background trauma that Tony is dealing with, which is, of course, Howard. The current act of trauma is ouch, I'm dying.
01:21:12
Red
Ouchies.
01:21:12
Blue
And the order in which they're introduced, I think is interesting because we get Vanko at the beginning and then Hammer comes in a little bit later. So my pitch, the scene in Monaco with. I can't believe it's been like an hour and a half and we haven't mentioned this. The briefcase suit up scene.
01:21:30
Red
Oh, yeah. In terms of how good this movie looks.
01:21:33
Blue
Fantastic sequence.
01:21:35
Case
Fantastic sequence. A little chaotic. Like, yeah, like, yeah, maybe a little crazy.
01:21:41
Red
No, but it's. It's well focused. The entire scene. Briefcase. The focus is the briefcase. Tony wants that briefcase. What's inside the briefcase? It must be something useful. And then he picks up the whole briefcase and you're like, I thought too small. It's such a good little moment of like, oh, he's been busy. He can't put this project in as.
01:21:57
Blue
A manifestation of Tony all always problem solving and fixing things that have been wrong in the past. It's a great, you know, like, first movie to movie sequence of that we see in other things. Also the. With the Chitauri. Oh, they can't bank worth a damn. Same thing you figured out with the Hammer drones. But that sequence of fighting Whiplash and Monaco is perfect up to the point where they capture him. Because my. My pitch is that I think Vanko should die in this first battle. And then with the like, oh, my God. Other people have this. This kind of like arc reactor tech. It can then spill out and the problem is not so concentrated in, oh, this other guy has figured it out. It's like, oh, it's out there. Maybe he. He did something.
01:22:40
Blue
Maybe he had some kind of like, dead Man's pact of like dead man switch to release this and you know, and then Hammer gets a hold of stuff. I, I don't know what the mechanics of it would look like.
01:22:52
Case
I think it could be interesting. I love this because this feeds into this feeds into a story that they have wanted to do in the Iron man movies, which is the Armor wars, which I, I referenced before. Armor wars is the other big famous arc from the 80s in addition to Demon in the Bottle. And Armor wars is a scenario where the plans for the Iron man armor get leaked out to the world or at least to like the black market. And so all of a sudden like all these like villains like start showing up with like Iron man armor versions of themselves. And that is. The Iron man movies have wanted to do that so goddamn hard since the beginning. And the idea that Hammer gets the Iron man tech and refines his things as drones or whatever makes so much goddamn sense.
01:23:37
Red
So love tightens up the movie as a whole because it actually turns that thing at the beginning into planting with payoff where Tony is like, I don't need to give you the Iron man tech because I am the only genius in the world who can make it. I am the smartest boy. And then obviously in the actual movie that we got when Vanko pops up and is like, hello, check out my cool whips with my arc reactor. It's like, oh, he's not the smartest boy. He's only one of many smart boys. Anyone could make an Iron man suit. And then that never pays off. It's still only Vanko who can do it like Hammer can. Like Hammer has to kidnap Vanko and be like, make my droids better, cuz I can't do anything with them. I'm not smart enough.
01:24:14
Red
I'm not, I'm not a smart boy. I just play on tv. So like what are you going to do with that? And then the idea that Vanko shows up and he's like the harbinger of things to come and he's like, I've already figured it out and this is how much damage I could already do. But now everybody has it, you know, AIM has it, HYDRA has it. Start name dropping the problems and then you have a reason for why Nick Fury shows up and is like Stark, what the hell?
01:24:38
Blue
Here, here's my, my further option not to be so bold as to you know, like pitch dialogue, but a version of the interaction. Like once they're kind of like they're locked in, they're like electric whip, you know, like join thing. Some version of Vanko basically threatens Tony and says like, you know, okay, maybe you've got me beat or whatever, but like, if you kill me like this, all of this leaks out. I will ruin you if you like lay a finger on me. Tony like blasts his face off, is like, don't you dare threaten me. Or some word to that effect. And then it just all starts to spill out and then immediately becomes like the consequences of Tony's recklessness spills into all these problems. That fury is like Stark.
01:25:20
Case
I love that. Because if for no other reason, then we establish that this is a Tony Stark who destroys the arc reactor that he rips off of Vanko at the end of the fight. Anyway, on my last rewatch of this, I couldn't remember if he destroyed it or not. And I was thinking, no, it's good that he doesn't so that he can inspect it and be like, oh, double your cycles and do all that like, all that bullshit. And then he still destroys it at the end. And that is a very movie kind of scene. But that's not Tony as I anticipated him. But it does make sense for a Tony that is dealing with so much other shit that he just doesn't have time for Vanko in this scenario.
01:26:02
Red
Also, he probably looked it over very quickly, immediately was like, oh yeah, I see how he did this. He should double the cycles and then destroys it. He is still very smart.
01:26:09
Case
He's very good at what he does.
01:26:10
Red
Yes, I really do like this. I'm a little bit reluctant because I think that the Marvel movies kill too many villains as it is. I think that like the fact that all these.
01:26:18
Case
But this is at the midpoint of the movie, not at the end of the movie.
01:26:21
Red
That's true, but it's still immediately after his introduction, he shows up in Monaco and just wreaks havoc. And then he dies at the end of the scene and is like, but once you've made God bleed, the people will cease to believe in him. And like, the thing is that actually turns that into foreshadowing of something that then pays off if we do start seeing more armored villains show up or even just Hammer. And I think I would say if you don't have Vanko in the back half of the movie, you should give Hammer a quirky mini boss squad. You should let him have some, like, goods and custom armor sets.
01:26:45
Blue
One of the corollaries is what we do with Hammer.
01:26:47
Sam
Yeah, yeah. I think it's also harder to kill Vanko, because this is just from a casting point of view, because this is Mickey Work's second comeback film. This is the film he does after he wins his Oscar for the wrestler. They clearly hire him to be the major foil and this major pull to Robert Downey Jr's thing. So I would actually just kill Hammer. I'd have Van go kill him in the second act, get tired of his bullshit and get rid of him. Because I think. I think you have. And I'm just piggybacking here. Blue, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. I will let you go back into this. But I like the idea of getting rid of someone.
01:27:25
Sam
But the whole thing, like the whole vibe of Hammer throughout this kind of movie and how they portray him specifically is that he's not good. Right? Like, he's what Elon Musk actually is right now. Like, he doesn't actually really invent anything. He kind of piggybacks off of other people. He's willing to do very unethical things, to steal things, to steal ideas. And he is constantly trying to ride Tony's coattail. He's trying to. To kind of chase him down. And I think we need him so that we release Vanko from prison. We need him to be the setup guy because he sees something valuable that he wants.
01:28:06
Sam
But I think at some point when we're in the second act, rather than have anything go on, I think we just have Venko get rid of him and just become like the person who takes over his entire operation. He's, he's smarter, he's more motivated, he definitely has a bone. And honestly, I do still like the idea of him being like, not only am I going to build all of these robots and sell it to all the governments of the world, but I'm going to give the tech to everyone. After I destroy you, after I show how my robots are more superior than your robots, I will destroy you. And then I will have the money that I should, that my father should have had, that we should have be profit of rather than being born in Siberia and, you know, into this, like, poverty.
01:28:59
Sam
And I think that then that gives Van Gogh a much stronger thing because, like, just wants revenge. Like, I feel like if he wants revenge not only to just like, crush Tony, but also seize the empire of weapons manufactured, then you've got a character who is, like, really hell bent on something and like, oh, it's great. Yes. I used this funny little man until he let me go. Like, until he like get me everything I needed and now he's done right. So we still kill off a character and we strengthen Vanko because he wants the whole pie.
01:29:37
Red
I guess I. The only reason I'm a little reluctant to that is truly just because Hammer is so fun and Vanko is so fun in two completely different ways. Part of the reason why I was like, I, I do like that they sort of together they form one whole Tony Stark basically is it's. And like, I think the thing is, you're right. The problem with Hammer is that he is just amusingly incompetent. He does not actually succeed at anything he does. The only thing he does is make Vanko like in a more advantageous position to be a worse problem. And I think that I kind of do like that because Hammer, you initially think he's harmless and he is fairly harmless.
01:30:09
Red
But then as soon as he lets Vanko go it's like, oh no, this guy will do damage if he thinks it will profit him. So you end up with Vanko who's to going. A very self contained motivation. It's just vengeance and it is pride. Because his motivation is like Tony has put himself above humanity. He's put himself as a God. I'm going to make God bleed and everyone will stop believing in him. Fascinating concept. Never goes anywhere in the movie. They can make that go somewhere in the movie. That would be awesome. And then you've got Hammer who also is like, Tony is above everyone. He's so cool. That's awesome. I want to be just like him. There's something you can do with that, with the characterization of these two characters if you let them actually have it.
01:30:44
Red
In any like dynamic beyond, Vanko is just kind of with Hammer and then like Hammer gives him access to 100% of his technology and Vanko becomes the main problem and Hammer can't do anything about it. Like I think if anything my argument is maybe a little bit more Hammer, like a little bit more stuff for Hammer to do. Like he doesn't need to be competent, he just needs to have an interesting angle on the world that he and Vanko can play off of each other. Because otherwise they're two disconnected threads. But if you can sort of give them something to do, then it starts interleaving in a more interesting way. And then together they can form one whole Tony Stark, like a buddy cop.
01:31:15
Sam
Film between the two of them, like BFFs.
01:31:17
Red
I'm just saying, hey, those two bad guys is a classic archetype and I'm a big Fan of it. I think it would be pretty fun if you had like a pinky in the brain situation with these guys where Hammer thinks he's the brain, but actually he is the pinky. I don't know.
01:31:29
Sam
I actually really like that.
01:31:30
Red
Yeah. Yeah.
01:31:33
Blue
I think one of my, my observations maybe bordering on problems or not with this movie is that the first couple. Iron man movie, I think works so well because it is a funnel out where there are more pieces on the board as we go through the runtime. And we kind of naturally see the way these splinter out before they kind of all coalesce back at the very end. Whereas this movie is an inverse funnel. We start extremely wide and narrow in all the way as we get towards the ending. And that is hard for an audience to keep track of. And in the second. Second act, there are the most plates in the air before, you know, Tony starts kind of solving some of these. Some of these plot threads.
01:32:15
Blue
And I feel like if we kill one of them, I think my preference is still kill Vanko, but kill one of them and it makes the board a lot simpler and we can really narrow in on what makes whichever villain remains more interesting in comparison tony. I. I like the things that you can do with a kind of like quasi armor wars approach. If we have Hammerby, the one who survives, and Vanko gets his kind of cackling, ha ha. You stupid Americans think you can solve problems by punching. That was Schwarzenegger. I don't know where that was coming from. Sorry, the wrong actor. But I. For the. For plot structure reasons as well as characterization reasons, my pitch is killing Vanko Sharks. I am looking for a 15% stake in.
01:33:07
Red
I'm looking for investors in my kill Vanko plan. This is a real Hammer energy we have right now.
01:33:12
Blue
My corollary was we can get some, like, jobber goons and like Lex Luthor, like, desk gang people to. To be Hammers. Like, you know, second in command, squad of. Of people through the midpoint of the movie. But if we're doing a superhero is.
01:33:28
Sam
Smart enough for that, though. Like, I just.
01:33:30
Red
Here's. Here's my. I think.
01:33:33
Sam
I just don't. We actually don't even think that any of the guys that work for him respect him. Like, I'm gonna be honest with you. Like, I just don't think that it works. Like, too. The Dusk people in. In Superman, you know, that. That cult, like, feeling that they have that adoration for Lex, that adoration for his intellect, like, that's not something that Hammer can hold down. This man is not respected by everyone like this. Even the gun that he builds, the extra piece he built into War Machine, it doesn't even go off the proper way. Like, it fails at the end. That's a joke. Like, he is the joke. And that is why if you want to keep the third act as strong as it is, you have to keep Ronko alive. You have. He is the stronger. Literally, figuratively.
01:34:23
Sam
But even emotionally, he is the stronger villain in this film. Like distraction, Handsome, hilarious distraction. He is not the villain of this film. He is stroking his portrait.
01:34:40
Case
Just.
01:34:41
Sam
He is a henchman level villain. He like, listen, you guys are being seduced by Sam Rockwell. And I understand it. He is so smart, so wonderful. But I am telling you, this would be a mistake.
01:34:57
Case
Wrong.
01:34:58
Blue
Why does it feel so right?
01:34:59
Red
You're all being taken in by this beautiful.
01:35:02
Sam
You're being taken in. And listen, I'm almost thinking now that maybe Red is right. And I know, like, listen, like Disney not great with the gay stuff. Maybe we make them lovers. Maybe we keep them alive.
01:35:17
Red
I could see some good toxic yaoi with these two.
01:35:19
Case
Oh yes, Soul.
01:35:21
Red
Neither of them die.
01:35:21
Sam
But no, I'm like, honestly, like, what? Like, what if. What if he was just so like Zenko. He becomes the acolyte. He becomes the person that's like, right.
01:35:36
Case
No, it's just straight up. Tops and bottoms. Tops and bottoms in between.
01:35:43
Sam
I'm like, listen, we will just be clear coded. Like, I know it's dizzy. We don't have to go all the way there. But we can give them the chemistry of us a of a fin. We could give them. We could give.
01:35:56
Red
Just need one of them to like push the other one up against a wall real quick. And everyone. The shipping right itself. We'll just.
01:36:02
Blue
100,000 words.
01:36:05
Case
Vanko was going to google this in prison for like 15 years. So.
01:36:10
Red
Okay, I will say I. I do think that the thing we're coming down on is like, both Vanko and Hammer do contribute something useful to the plot. Something that like, we would miss without it. And like, the thing is, Vanko is a much more intimidating boss fight. You know that if you put Hammer in a suit, we just get Iron Monger too. We get another guy who doesn't actually know how the suit works, who just fill it full of toys and doesn't know how to pilot it. Vanko is an interestingly new threat just from like raw choreography. The way that he works is different from the way all the other suits work because he built his own from the ground up. And like, yeah, it's a bit of a tank in a similar way to like the. The warmonger or.
01:36:44
Red
Yeah, the Iron Monger thing is. But, like, you know, it's just the fact that he uses whips is good. And, you know, Hammer can only ever imitate Hammer is not actually creative. And I think the idea that Hammer enables Vanko is useful because together, you know, they form one whole Tony Stark. Vanko has the genius and the actual inventive, you know, Spark and Hammer has the money and the reputation. But I think you could potentially give Hammer a little more to do by giving the stakes of his weird corporate conflict with Tony like, a little bit more something going on. And I think that's something that you could reinforce with the. The underpinnings of the Armor wars if, like, if Vanko doesn't die, but he's like, ha, I've already won.
01:37:22
Red
And then, like, it turns out that he already dropped his, like, his plans online, you know, on like a git repository, and everyone just has them. Yeah, I will say we don't. We are inadvertently creating a very funny, like, communism versus capitalism narrative here where Vanko is like, the war, the Iron man armored schmotics belong to everybody. And Tony's like, no, they belong to me, the rich boy who made them. And then if we make Vanko explode, we're pretty clearly taken aside in that particular conflict. But I just, I think it's interesting that, like the idea that Vanko releases this information and we start seeing more problems pop up and, like, Hammer tech suddenly takes a huge step forward.
01:38:00
Red
And then someone's like, Tony, I know you're not doing weapons contracts anymore, but, like, Hammer is, and he's using technology derived from yours and he is making weapons. Like, what are you gonna do about it? And like, far be it for me to suggest that a movie does boring politics bullshit, but I do think that, like, if Hammer is like, oh, no. Well, Tony's pulling out of all these weapons contracts. But not to worry, Hammer Tech can step in now. We've got all these great new designs and Tony's just like, fuck you. It's my arc reactor technology. How dare you use it for evil.
01:38:26
Blue
In a roundabout way, I feel like that gives Rhodey more to do in this movie.
01:38:30
Red
Yes. Because instead of Rhodey just being like, tony, man, you gotta stop being so alcoholic and shit. He's, like, seeing this from both sides of, like, on Tony's side, he's. And also, if we throw in the Tony's also dying at the same time. This is just Tony and terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Which could play up all kinds of interesting stuff with the way he's handling things. And rather than him just being like, I can let my company go to Pepper and I don't need to think about it because the company just kind of exists in the background to justify that I'm super rich anyway. If we actually get a little bit in the weeds with, like, what does he do now that he doesn't do weapons?
01:38:59
Red
And what is Hammer doing now that he can do weapons comparable to what Tony was doing? And then in the background, Vanko is like, it's still not enough. I need him dead. But Hammer has Vanko, like, on a short leash. Just like, yeah, you know, he's helping me with my weapons development, but nobody needs to know I've broken him out of prison secretly because he's the. I. I still need to pretend like I'm the genius equivalent tony Stark. And then Vanko can still go nuts with all the new Hammer tech and try to kill Tony in the finale. And we still have 1 million robots because we can't get rid of those. Because initially I was like, he needs a quirky mini boss squad if we're getting rid of Vanko.
01:39:31
Red
And I think the problem is that makes things too messy because then we're bringing in, like, three to six new guys in custom armor suits to be a problem. That's just too much for the third act of this movie, which, as we've all agreed, is pretty much flawless as they stand.
01:39:42
Case
Although it would allow for the Titanium.
01:39:44
Red
Man, I think that it would be a lot of fun. But maybe not for Iron Man 2. Maybe we throw that in for Iron Man 3 and let it actually be in the suit for Iron Man. There's some that was. That's been festering for a while.
01:39:56
Sam
But don't get too close to Iron Man 3.
01:40:02
Red
Would love if there was actual Iron man in that movie.
01:40:06
Case
So let me throw out my notes, because my notes are very small, which is the biggest thing I was addressing was the thought that SHIELD coming in to play in the second half of Act 2 is too much for the MCU where it was great. And honestly, all the notes I had was just like, behind the scenes at the Stark Expo. Tony should have been getting requests to, like, speak with Agent Coulson.
01:40:31
Sam
Mm.
01:40:33
Red
So, like, instead of all the SHIELD Stuff we got, he's just getting pinged.
01:40:36
Case
By Coulson earlier in the movie. And then we get the SHIELD Stuff later. Because, like, honestly, I was like, man, there's too many things that I like about. About Hammer, about Vanko, about all of these things. Things in here. But the. The SHIELD Stuff is necessary for where we go in the. The Avengers movies. But it is very abrupt when it, like, comes into play in this movie. So, like, my biggest thought, you know, in addition to, like, having a general agreement with both of. Well, with all of y' all in terms of, like, how we would sort of, like, even out this.
01:41:13
Red
Kill one, no kill the other.
01:41:14
Blue
No kill one or the other. I don't know.
01:41:17
Sam
Man.
01:41:19
Case
Is just setting up S.H.I.E.L.D earlier on, like, S.H.I.Eld was just the post credits. I mean, yes, we had the whole, like, strategic hazard intervention, whatever.
01:41:28
Red
Yeah, the.
01:41:29
Case
Like that sequence recurring in the first Iron man movie. And. And that's why I'm thinking Coulson would make sense to be like, coulson's been trying to get a hold of you throughout the. The first act of the movie. And then we get to the second half of Act 2, and. And that's where Coulson's, like, all of a sudden. Sudden being like, my orders are totally different now. Like, if you try to escape, I'm going to tase you. And watch Super Nanny, by the way, talk about a dated reference on that one.
01:41:56
Red
I do think that's very fun, because I think it would be. You got a rule of threes. It, like. It's like, Coulson's on the line, and of course, Tony is concealing his illness. It's like, whatever. Tell him I'm not at home, I'm busy. I'm off doing stupid party things. He'll buy that in, like, second one. Coulson says it's urgent. You. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Third time it might. Maybe it's Coulson. Maybe it's just Fury. It's like, Stark, you've been dodging my calls, and I'm sick of it.
01:42:17
Case
Well, actually, that works really well when he takes the call from Vano and thinks it's Coulson at first.
01:42:23
Red
Right? Yeah. And then when. When the actual third call from SHIELD Turns up, and it's just I. I'm a fond of the. The oh factor of Fury just showing up. I think we can skip all that, like, oh, not recommended for the Avengers Initiative setup up. I don't think we need that for this. I think they're doing enough teasing of, like, there's weird going down in New Mexico we have to deal with. We'll do. We're. We'll worry about this later. Like, let them have only one other plate spinning and let that plate be my boy Thor, of course. And. And that way you get. You get Nick Fury, you get to get Sam Jackson just kind of go being, you know, scary as. As he clearly enjoys doing.
01:42:55
Red
And if you play that up as, like, this is the first time that Tony, like, dying has come up with anyone else, because, like, you can't hide that from Nick Fury. Obviously not. And, like, that is kind of how they played in the main movie, where he's like, all right, let's give you a little boost. And then you get to figure this out. I think that's not a bad way to do it. But I do agree that more shield buildup would be fun, and you could play that for a fun little character beat on the way in, which I think would be neat.
01:43:18
Sam
I also think that if you keep the Howard Stark of it all and you. You can just basically shorten that whole scene with them, like, leaving him with the case. I think they can just walk him into a room and play the video. And that's going to cut down some time where it's just going to be like, even if you don't do Colson all the time, if you do Fury showing up and being like, listen, you need to get your shit together. And then be like. And Colson comes in and goes, hello. And then he just presses play and they watch, like, the video of his dad being like, I love you so much. There is a future here. Go to my office. Look at this thing. Thanks.
01:43:58
Sam
Just Kind of shorten all of that up and, like, you can still introduce your shield very, very quickly and kind of introduce this character that you're going to build upon in the next set of movies, while also keeping Howard Stark in there because we need him for Captain America to tie it all in. Fine, whatever. Just shorten that all up so that the shield ship fits right into the Stark, like, the Howard of it all. And that way we're spending less time on separate things.
01:44:28
Case
Things.
01:44:29
Sam
You know, I have a.
01:44:31
Red
A secondary tweak then, if we're doing that, because I do agree that probably cutting Howard entirely seems a little bit implausible. I think the part of the Howard component of the story that kind of jolts me out of it is that he is truly like, hello, son. I understand you may be suffering palladium poisoning from installing an arc reactor in your sternum. Not to worry. I have found the solution. 40 years before this will ever become an issue. No I think what you should do is let Howard do like, yeah, give him a video, something that Tony looks at and puzzles over. And it gives Tony an idea for how to solve the problem. And again, at this point, we are in the technobabble zone. It can be anything. And whatever Howard's saying can be anything. It's just. I don't think it should be.
01:45:12
Red
Here is the gift wrapped solution to exactly this extremely weird problem you are dealing with. Yeah, that part is the part that throws me for a loop. And you can have Howard saying something that's more in character than, hello, son, I found a new element and turned into Epcot by like, you can let him actually do something that is more Howardy while still kind of affirming tony, like, oh, yeah, my dad a complicated guy, but maybe not the jerk I wrote. Yeah, we don't even need to fix his daddy issues. It can truly just be like, we think there's pertinent information here that might be helpful for some fucking reason. And then like, Howard becomes a topic of conversation.
01:45:43
Sam
Or it could be not as direct a message to his son. It could be like talking about the idea of creating a society with such a clean energy that runs so well. And then say something to the extent of like, this is the kind of future I want to leave my son. Which will give him the validation that he needs, but without feeling like he's sending like a if you're watching this.
01:46:05
Red
I'm dead kind of video and you're getting palladium, right?
01:46:10
Sam
And so it's kind of like him talking about, like, the future and like, oh, my God, like, this is like, this is my idea, this is my dream, this is what I've been working for. But I'm falling short on this, it and this kind of clean energy. I found this new compound and it would be amazing if I could just figure this out. But unfortunately, technology is not where it should be. This is the kind of future that I'd love to leave my son. And like, that's enough. Because, like, that means he was thinking about him without actually, like, crediting Howard too much. Like, your daddy issues don't go away from that. Right? It's like, oh, that thought about me once. Okay. You know, and it's not like, that still leaves the complicated issue of everything else.
01:46:57
Sam
You know, they also try to soften everything with Howard by being like, that Russian guy wanted to make money off of it. Howard didn't. And it's like he sold weapons. Are we really Howard didn't want, like, I'll.
01:47:11
Red
I'll excuse war profiteering, but I'll draw the line at making money on clean energy.
01:47:15
Blue
Right.
01:47:17
Sam
I. I think, like, we don't necessarily. They just want to make him good. That can be dropped, too. I think we just, like, kind of like he had him deported. We don't need to know the ins and outs of why, but. Yeah, I just think if we have them play the video for him, like, instantaneous. Not leave him alone with his thoughts to ponder it. Just be like, this is. Like, this might be the really smart. This might be a solution. Take a look at this. Since it's your father's work anyway.
01:47:50
Red
I can bounce off that. But, Casey, I was about to say.
01:47:53
Case
One thing that drives me crazy is that they forced Tony to watch all of the same reels of his dad doing different takes of the Stark.
01:48:04
Blue
This is my ass.
01:48:06
Red
I guess that's supposed to humanize him.
01:48:09
Case
It does. I mean, like, I get. I get from the standpoint of why you showed scenes like that, but, like, the fact that, like, SHIELD Makes Tony watch all of these before we finally get to the like. And Tony, by the way, here's the element.
01:48:22
Red
Yeah. Yeah. Like, you think they would have noticed that part was probably the significant clip.
01:48:26
Case
Just. Just fast forward the first, like, 30 minutes and then, like, watch that clip.
01:48:30
Sam
Like, yeah, you can even show one of them and have Coulson go, oh, sorry, sorry. Let me get to the important one. And then fast forward.
01:48:36
Red
Yeah, give him another moment. Sorry. It's got a similar thumbnail for me.
01:48:38
Blue
For loop when you're scrolling, trying to find the actual recipe.
01:48:43
Sam
Exactly.
01:48:44
Red
It's just like, it all started with my mother. So I. I have a thing that I was thinking about that. So, first of all, if we're doing the bit with, like, Tony, who's moved away from making weapons, suddenly has to deal with the fact that his technology is now everywhere and people are using it for doing things that he personally finds distasteful and irresponsible now. So, like, the.
01:49:04
Case
The.
01:49:04
Red
The niche that he used to fill and then the left is now being filled by other people like Hammer, and he can't handle it. And then you give him his dad, who also did weapons manufacturing, and then you give him this video where it's like, yes, you know, mountains, manufacturing. It was a unfortunate necessity of World War II and all that and all these other things. But what I really want to be able to do is stop making weapons and be able to start building a better future. For my son. And then we. We end up in, like, this. No, nice, sort of. He provides an example tony of, like, yeah, this has been on his mind. Like, it's what. It's what dad wanted that he never was able to achieve.
01:49:37
Red
He had to keep making weapons till he died, even though he wanted to move away from it and do something more moral. So, like, if I can do this, I'll be. I'll be fulfilling his dream and my own kind of thing if he can find a solution to this whole, like, Vanko situation. And I realize that the way we're framing this, we don't have a solution for Vanko. Leaks the Armor wars plans onto the Internet, and everyone has to deal with. With that. But, like, it's a start at least. And I also think we don't necessarily need SHIELD to be the one who's like, sits his ass down in front of the projector and is like, go nuts.
01:50:05
Red
If they're truly, like, we can even have this be a thing that Tony just, like, has on file and occasionally watches when he's, like, feeling down or like, he's, you know, he's. He's dying and he's processing that by himself. Maybe some of the way he's handling that is just like watching the old film reels. And we do the standard thing where he sees something in the reel and he's like, wait, that's it. And he runs off and, like, tinkers up his techno babble solution. The thing were talking about with, like, oh, he's got this clean energy idea. He wants to build a society off of it.
01:50:29
Red
We could throw in a line where he's like, unfortunately, the thing I haven't been able to solve is that the palladium leeches toxic outflow into the water supply of the land, you know, and it's like, oh, yeah, on a small scale, that would fuck with your blood, wouldn't it? And he's like, I haven't been able to find a solution. I've been pursuing this avenue of approach, perhaps some sort of chemical treatment, but I'm just not there yet, and perhaps I never will be. And I'll be forced to make weapons for the end of my, you know, whatever, like, give me. Yeah. And then we end up with like, Tony is like, he doesn't get the solution presented to him on a silver platter. He's presented with a problem his dad couldn't solve but knew could be solved.
01:51:03
Red
And then Tony is like, all right, I'll take another stab at this. You know, for me and my old man, maybe. And then he solves the problem and then he gets to go on and have his cool fight with Vanko. Just, I feel like we can throw all these threads together and kind of pull something out of it that actually is. Is like semi coherent while still letting Vanko and Hammer be our nice little like toxic Yami bag a couple in the background. We can't kill one of them if we have to. I just don't think we have to. I think it's fun if we let them be terrible together.
01:51:27
Case
I. I likewise agree that they should survive because Vanko, like, manipulating Hammer is so good just by itself.
01:51:38
Sam
Yeah.
01:51:40
Case
But I do like the idea of the armor wars stuff getting out there, and I. I think that's a great Easter egg for like a Future Iron Man 3 kind of situation or something like that coming off of this. Because holy hell is the world that we see at the end of Iron Man 2, a world that should be chock full of robot armors very soon.
01:52:04
Red
Yeah, absolutely. And also, if we really wanted to justify a decision that I think none of us liked, this could help explain why Tony starts moving into nanotech after this. If the armor tech is out there, the nanotech becomes the new thing that nobody else has because he's essentially, he's in an arms race with his own secrets getting out there. And the thing is, this is a classic arc AIM is constantly trying to steal his. Like, this is a problem he should be dealing with is that every time he makes it like a technological advancement, he knows he's got like a month until somebody manages to plagiarize it and start killing people with it. So, like, it makes sense that he would start trying to do something so specific that, like, no, this really has to be like me and me alone.
01:52:44
Red
I mean, I guess the problem is people making bootleg nanobots is how you get gray goo scenarios. But I do think that, like, this would be an easy way to hand wave. Like, that's why he started moving into miniaturization. It's much harder to steal that way.
01:52:55
Case
But yeah, no, that does make sense. And that does address an issue I have with the greater MCU trajectory of Iron man, which is this is the last time where it feels like he has a suit that really matters. And then after that, like. And part of that's the joke of Iron Man 3, where it's like the Mark 42 or whatever it is. Like, but. But all of a sudden, it doesn't feel like the Individual armors matter at all. It just is. Yeah, no, he's got a thing, and he can, like, have armor be around him whenever he needs it.
01:53:23
Red
It's a weird kind of, like, suffering from excess because Iron Man 3 also introduces a ton of suits that all have different quirks, and we see them very briefly, and then he makes them all explode. Yeah, this is like, Tony, my man. Like, again, whereas my name's Heroes, they've done that thing where it's like, this suit does this does that. We're in a weird situation. He'd better bring out the stealth suit. But for the most part, it's just blind luck if he happens to have one that hasn't been exploded this week.
01:53:47
Blue
Right.
01:53:48
Red
And, like, that's fun because the. The differences between them are pretty minor. And then you basically bring out the Hulkbuster as the special occasion suit. And other than that, they're all fairly interchangeable. And then Iron Man 3 introduces all these suits and then doesn't let him wear any of them for. For most of the movie, which is still the part that irritates me the most because that is a whole different. Another pass. It's just, it really seems to me, like with Iron man, they had two options. And one of them was, we explore who Tony is without the suit. The other one was like, we explore who Tony is trying to build himself into through the suits. And I think option two would have been much more interesting, what with it actually being about iron. What do I know?
01:54:25
Red
They should have called it Tony Stark 3. Saved me the fucking price of admission.
01:54:29
Case
Well, but we don't need to go that far down the road of Iron Man 3. Red. Blue. Thank you so much for having our conversation. Blue. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to address?
01:54:41
Blue
I really like that fucking briefcase, man.
01:54:44
Red
That's so cool. It's clean, man. It's gorgeous. And I love how you can see, like, oh, he can't fit armor plating in there. It's so articulated.
01:54:57
Blue
There's a physicality to those early. You'll lose it completely. When you get to nanotech, there's one shot where roadie is in the Mark 2 outside on the army base. And you can tell it's a physical suit because, oh, man, that thing gleams in the sunlight.
01:55:14
Red
And Dog Beetle is not moving, standing so still.
01:55:18
Blue
Yeah, he's completely.
01:55:19
Red
Everyone, come take a look at me. Don't make me turn my head.
01:55:23
Blue
The briefcase suit is. The briefcase suit scene is one of my favorite single sequences. In any Marvel movie. And it represents so much of what I love about the character.
01:55:34
Red
I love that they panic and hit Vanko with the car twice. That's so real. Tony is trying to stay focused.
01:55:40
Blue
Some of those early MCU fight sequences are so kinetic and like it's in a weird environment. And they are constrained by the physical space of this environment. They're on a racetrack.
01:55:51
Case
They're not entirely in green screen.
01:55:53
Blue
Oh.
01:55:54
Red
I mean, they're not shooting that shit on a volume.
01:55:56
Blue
The Deadpool in the car is completely green screen. But it's a weird environment. And the physicality that environment requires is really interesting. And you know, a race car track is a fantastic kind of sequence.
01:56:10
Red
Here's the choreography is relative to environment. And the weirder the environment, the more interesting the choreography. Choreography.
01:56:15
Blue
Yeah.
01:56:15
Red
Unless you have 1 million robots, in which case the fun part is just making them all explode.
01:56:19
Blue
An empty giant dome terrarium.
01:56:22
Red
Yeah. Shoot that on a volume and it's fine.
01:56:26
Blue
That's all I got.
01:56:28
Case
Well, look, sorry, Red.
01:56:30
Red
You go, oh, I just had the really minor point. We brought this up in the voice note files. But like, I like that Tony doesn't talk when he's fighting. I like that. You can tell he is like one. He's an inverse Spider Man. He's 1000% locked in and just trying not to die. Like, he's a cool tinkerer. He's not a good fighter. He's clearly scared shitless every time. It's good characterization and I really like it. It's part of why I find him so charming in these early movies before they just make him crack jokes 24 7. But yeah, just a little thing. He knows how to be quiet, unlike me.
01:57:01
Case
Well, but we love when you talk and that's why we. We love overly sarcastic productions. So on that note, why don't the two of you give some plot plugs?
01:57:09
Red
Yes.
01:57:11
Blue
Well, we have our YouTube channel, overly sarcastic Productions, Bi weekly. Not that Bi weekly. Podcast. The Overly sarcastic podcast and bi weekly. Still the other bi weekly.
01:57:21
Red
After.
01:57:21
Blue
After show. That's a half hour freeform discussion available on our Patreon page. We've had some. Some relevant MCU videos in the last few months. A rewatch of Phase One and talking about why that worked so damn well. Deep Dive into why Winter Soldier is the best MCU movie. And a handful of other things kind of related sprinkled out over the past few years of the channel. If you're curious, you'll be able to find something that's Interesting. To whatever angle of superhero discussion you want to dig into.
01:57:52
Red
We did just mention Superman 2025. We have a couple of videos about that because it is also very good. Yeah, yeah. I think that actually is about everything. Oh, we're on Blue Sky. We used to be on Twitter and now we're not because Justin Hammer's bad person on social media.
01:58:06
Case
Justin Hammer is a bad guy.
01:58:08
Red
Yeah, man. Justin Hammer did that crazy salute thing and we all kind of just had to like, choose where we wanted to be in response to that.
01:58:15
Case
But just one more time. Where can they find you on Blue Sky?
01:58:18
Red
Oh, yes, I believe we're still at just out overly sarcastic productions. So yeah, worth checking. Hold on. Sometimes the URL has to be shortened.
01:58:24
Blue
But I think that's correct at overly sarcastic Bluesky Social.
01:58:28
Red
Oh, just overly sarcastic. How about that?
01:58:30
Case
Yeah, see, good that we confirmed.
01:58:32
Red
Good that we checked. Yeah.
01:58:34
Case
Yeah. Sam, how about you? Where can people find you and follow you?
01:58:37
Sam
They can find me here when we drop an episode and our app. App episodes. And they can find me occasionally lurking on our Discord because I absolutely, positively remember that certain point of view. Discord exists and definitely lurk there occasionally. But if you have a problem with anything I said, especially about me not liking Masters of the Universe, you can find Kate.
01:59:03
Case
Well, the easiest place to find me is the aforementioned Certain POV Discord, where we've got links in the show note for our Discord server. Come find us there. We have great conversations, we have sneak peeks and upcoming stuff. It's a great place to just be in general. But otherwise, if you don't like doing the Discord thing and you want to find me on the social medias stuff, you can find Mease Aiken on most social media platforms, aside from Instagram. Instagram, where I am holding on four dear life to my AIM screen name from high school, which is Quetzalcoatl5, which is Q U, E T Z A L C o a T L5. Because I'm a legion of superheroes nerd. And I was a pretentious mythology nerd in high school then, as is now.
01:59:49
Red
I was going to say you picked a hell of a tag for the spelling people in the audience.
01:59:53
Case
I know, I know. And that's why I have to spell it out now.
01:59:56
Sam
True.
01:59:56
Red
Yeah.
01:59:56
Case
But you can check that out at our Discord. You can check me out on both platforms at Case aiken or at quetzalcoatl5. You can check out the stuff we're doing at the certain POV patreon so if you go to patreon.com certainpovmedia you can support us directly. That is a great place to check out all this stuff we're doing. I'm doing weekly essays for even the free tier, but we've got clips and other kind of like preview material for the people at the paid tiers. It's a really great place to be. On that note, I should thank the people who joined our Patreon at the Executive Producer level. So we've got a bunch of really awesome people including Micah McCaw, Carter Hallett, Sean Muir Lee, Gregor Memento Young, Logan Crowley, Joe Mastropiero, Casey and Nancy Akin, Adam Sampter and Keith Letinen.
02:00:45
Case
And these are the awesome people who joined at the executive Producer level. If you want to come and join our Patreon, John, we appreciate you at any tier but honestly if you contribute a dollarly amount that helps keep the lights going and that's a really awesome thing and we you should consider doing that because it's nice. Yeah yeah. Red and blue agree.
02:01:09
Sam
Yeah, me too.
02:01:10
Red
Can confirm thanks. Yeah, money can be exchanged for goods and services.
02:01:14
Case
Exactly.
02:01:16
Blue
Vanko Seething.
02:01:20
Case
But but otherwise you can check out our next episode. Sam, what is coming up on our next episode?
02:01:26
Sam
Well, next time we'll be talking about Highlander 2 the Quickening, but until then, if you enjoyed this, press it on.
02:01:38
Blue
Thanks for listening to Certain Point of View's Another Pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on itunes.
02:01:47
Sam
Just go to certainpov.com Netherpass is a certain POV production. Our hosts are Sam Alicea and Case Aiken. The show is edited by Sofia Richardi. Our logo and episode art is by Case Aiken. Our intro theme is by Vin Macri and our outro theme is by Matt Brogan.
02:02:07
Case
CPOV certainpov.com.
Transcribed by https://fireflies.ai/