Character Study – Tony Stark (MCU)
Tony Stark. The original hero of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. The Invincible Iron Man. Arguably the Earth’s greatest hero and protector. There is no denying Tony Stark’s importance in the MCU, as well as in storytelling in general. He is the very definition of a deep, complicated, and flawed protagonist, capable of capturing the hearts and imaginations of audiences around the world. But what makes him so interesting and compelling? What nuts and bolts make him tick? That’s what we’re going to talk about in this character study.
Tony Stark was born to Howard and Maria Stark. He always described his childhood as difficult, to say the least. Howard Stark, billionaire industrialist and co-founder of S.H.I.E.L.D., was far from an ideal father by his own admission. Continuing a cycle of stern, abusive fathers, he was often harsh with the young Tony and never openly expressed love or affection toward his son. With his father often sending him away to boarding school, Tony would always have more fond memories of his mother. While not much is known about Maria Stark in MCU continuity, she had to have been a patient and intelligent woman to tame the serial womanizer in Howard Stark. Despite his strained relationship with his father, Tony cared very deeply for his mother his whole life. Sadly, both Howard and Maria died while Tony was in college, leaving him to face his adult life alone.
With Tony’s upbringing and natural intelligence, it was only a matter of time before he took the technology industry by storm. After graduating from MIT, he joined his late father’s company, Stark Industries, and quickly began to prove himself as a visionary. Together with Obadiah Stane, Howard’s old business partner, they brought Stark Industries into the post 9-11 era with gusto. Through it all, Tony considered himself an ironmonger with a code of honor, designing his weapons to protect American soldiers and their allies. He thought he had everything figured out and taken control of his life. That, of course, was when life threw him a massive curveball.
Becoming Iron Man
The 2008 attack on Tony Stark’s convoy changed his life in so many ways. Upon being captured by the Ten Rings terrorist group, Tony was forced to build a weapon for them alongside Ho Yinsen, another captured scientist. Tony soon formed a bond with Yinsen, not only due to the older man saving his life but also from Yinsen’s words of inspiration. Seeing Stark Industries weapons in the hands of terrorists by way of the black market lit a tiny flame in Tony’s heart, but it was Yinsen sacrificing himself to save Tony that pushed him to change how he lived all facets of his life. This is the easiest and simplest way to view Tony Stark’s initial transformation into a hero, but the truth goes far deeper.
Ho Yinsen’s sacrifice turned out to be the catalyst for enflaming another of Tony’s personality traits: his obsessive perfectionism and need for control. This was almost always due to his feelings of guilt for his past sins – Tony was well aware of how flawed he was and suffered great insecurities as a result. These traits would go on to define the rest of Tony’s life in so many different ways. Even from the very moment he set foot back on American soil, he stated publicly that the weapons industry had become comfortable with zero accountability, pushing him to exercise control over the rogue parts of the industry he could influence. The result was the birth of Iron Man, a superhero in an advanced suit of armor capable of flight and armed with the most advanced weaponry Stark Industries had ever produced. At the heart of it all was Tony Stark’s magnum opus: the arc reactor. A more advanced version of the electromagnet he had built as a captive, the arc reactor was an exceptionally powerful source of self-sustaining energy, allowing the Iron Man suit to function for extended periods.
Through his early adventures combating Obadiah Stane, Justin Hammer, and Ivan Vanko, Tony’s need for control only grew. In each case, he saw the increasing dangers of his weapons and inventions falling into the wrong hands. Yet Tony remained so untrusting or, perhaps, so egotistical that he seemed to define any hands other than his own as the wrong hands. He wouldn’t even trust his best friend, James Rhodes, with the Iron Man armor until faced with the threat of Vanko duplicating Tony’s inventions. This distrust leads us directly to Nick Fury.
The Avengers Initiative
Tony Stark and Nick Fury are polar opposites in many respects, but one specific part of their personalities align perfectly – they are both futurists. They’re constantly trying to anticipate and prepare for everything, especially those things others might say can’t happen. Fury, given his past experiences with Carol Danvers, knew the day might come when humanity would face an insurmountable threat. Thus, he created the Avengers Initiative, an idea to bring together a team of remarkable people to face such unique threats on behalf of humanity. On the day Tony Stark revealed to the world that he was Iron Man, Fury had his first potential candidate.
Things did not go well in the early days for Tony and Fury. Tony’s lack of trust in anyone but himself, combined with his erratic and impulsive nature, leads Fury to disqualify him from the Avengers Initiative except in a consulting capacity. At that point in his life, Tony was not in any way a team player. Though Fury suspected the massive potential of Tony Stark, he feared him to be more of a liability than an asset. Tony eventually did stabilize himself to some extent after neutralizing the threat of Ivan Vanko, but Fury still opted for a wait-and-see approach. A couple of short years later, however, this cautious mindset would be thrown out the window.
With the reemergence of Loki and his theft of the Tesseract, the Avengers Initiative was no longer a mere thought experiment. As Nick Fury assembled the candidates for his team, Tony’s shortcomings in team settings moved to the forefront. While he had relatively polite and positive interactions with fellow scientist Bruce Banner, Tony treated Nick Fury, Natasha Romanoff, and Thor Odinson with distrust from the outset. And, of course, that barely scratches the surface of the instant clash seen between Tony and Steve Rogers. Soon, Agent Phil Coulson was dead, and Thor and Banner MIA. In the aftermath, the Avengers seemed broken, shut down before they even got started.
Yet despite their differences, Phil Coulson’s death served to galvanize Tony and Steve, motivating them to mount a defense against Loki’s incoming army. As they arrived in New York with Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton, they began to repel the invasion. At first, nothing worked, and even the arrival of Thor wasn’t enough to change things. It’s only when Bruce Banner arrived that the Hulk was able to stem the initial assault and bring the six Avengers together as a team for the first time. It was at that moment of their first team-up that Tony experienced a moment of personal growth with one simple statement.
“Call it, Cap.”
With those three words, Tony finally acknowledges his own failings and shortcomings, recognizing that Steve Rogers is the leader the Avengers need. Steve is a soldier with a tactical mindset, which is exactly what helps turn the tide. Finally working together as a team, the Avengers coordinate their efforts and stymie Loki’s early invasion efforts. But even this isn’t enough to prevent Nick Fury’s superiors from ordering a nuclear strike on Manhattan. Knowing he’s the only one capable of intercepting the missile, Tony never once hesitates. He takes control of the missile’s flight path and, proving to Steve that he does have the ability to make the sacrifice play, directs the nuke into the wormhole and towards the mothership for Loki’s army. Though Steve Rogers became the leader of the Avengers in this battle, Tony earned the title of Earth’s Best Defender.
PTSD
The years immediately following the Battle of New York were tumultuous for Tony Stark. Suffering from insomnia and nightmares, he spends his time in his lab, tinkering with dozens of new Iron Man variations and distancing himself from his girlfriend, Pepper Potts. Even in saving the planet from an alien invasion, Tony’s compulsive desire to control the situation plagues him. He knows how bad it could have been, that they won the day largely on nerve and good fortune. The Aldrich Killian incident only exacerbated this stress, though Tony managed to even himself out to some degree after ending the threat of the Extremis virus. After undergoing surgery to remove the shrapnel from his chest, Tony goes into semi-retirement, resolving to only bring out the Iron Man armor again in the event of extreme scenarios.
Such a scenario arrived three years after the Battle of New York. With the revelation that HYDRA had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D., Steve Rogers assembled the Avengers once more to assault the HYDRA base holding Loki’s scepter. Though they were successful in retrieving the scepter, Tony’s mind was unknowingly attacked by Wanda Maximoff. She saw his fears about future invasions and used her abilities to heighten those fears, leading Tony to make the first truly drastic mistake of his superhero career.
Using the semi-sentience within Loki’s scepter, Tony enlists Banner’s assistance in creating Ultron, an A.I. program capable of inhabiting mechanical bodies. Tony envisions Ultron as the bouncer to protect Earth from all future cosmic threats, but he severely underestimates the lengths Ultron will go to fulfill his prime directive of saving the world. Though Tony later redeems himself by using his established Jarvis program with the Mind Stone to create the heroic Vision, his creation of Ultron resulted in a massive breach of trust with the rest of the Avengers. In particular, the divisions between Tony and Steve deepen, as Steve voices his disgust at Tony’s attempts to win all future wars before they start. In the end, Ultron is destroyed, but only after the total destruction of Sokovia. Tony goes back into retirement while helping to fund the reorganized Avengers.
Civil War
Despite the success of the Avengers against Ultron, Tony’s psyche continued in a downward spiral. He already felt intense guilt for his role in creating Ultron, and when an Avengers operation in Lagos went awry and resulted in civilian deaths, global tensions boiled over. With public support for the Avengers divided, the United Nations demanded further oversight. Tony, in his guilt, then became the one thing he had never been before – fully compliant with a governmental entity. Instead of first approaching the Avengers to discuss a possible response, he hastily agreed to give the United Nations what they wanted. Tony then went to the Avengers and informed them they would either submit to the UN’s Sokovia Accords or be permanently retired.
Needless to say, Tony’s actions did not go over well with the Avengers. While some felt the Sokovia Accords would likely happen no matter what and agreed to them to maintain some semblance of control, others saw Tony as once again going behind their backs to undermine the team. Steve Rogers had long-held philosophical differences with Tony Stark, and he viewed this latest revelation as an attempt to handcuff the Avengers, hampering their ability to respond to enhanced threats too dangerous for normal authorities. In but a few short years in the modern-day, Steve had developed a massive distrust in politicians and now made his choice to refuse to submit.
Tony’s actions regarding the Sokovia Accords and Steve’s reply highlight a fantastic dichotomy between the two characters. Where Tony began his journey as a man who refused to submit to any authority except himself, he now advocated for UN control over the Avengers. Conversely, where Steve began as a loyal soldier who followed orders, he now saw corruption everywhere, not in the governmental systems themselves, but in the people in charge of them. Here, at the midpoint of the Infinity Arc, the two principal characters have completely swapped philosophical places in a jarring fashion, making a full-scale conflict inevitable.
Throughout the Avengers Civil War, many compromises were made, but nobody made more compromises than Tony himself. As previously stated, Tony considers himself a futurist, always trying to anticipate that which nobody else can. He saw the Accords as unavoidable and believed that the only way to keep one hand on the wheel was to agree to them up front. This initial compromise leads to several others, such as quarantining Wanda Maximoff at the Avengers compound, attempting to pressure Steve to sign the accords with promises of amendments, and interfering with Secretary Ross’ systems while talking with Sam Wilson about Steve’s whereabouts. Tony tries to do the best he can, but one cannot deny that he is all over the place at this point.
After finally tracking Steve Rogers and Bucky Barns to Siberia, Tony agrees to help in their mission to kill the Winter Soldier program, having learned that Bucky had been framed for the events that started the Civil War. Unfortunately, this alliance is short-lived, as Tony soon learns from archive footage that a brainwashed Bucky was the one who had murdered Howard and Maria Stark years ago. Worse, Steve had learned about this two years before and kept the information from Tony. With all trust between them destroyed, Tony tries and fails to kill Steve and Bucky. The result is Steve and his supporters going on the run as outlaws and Tony taking leadership of a ramshackle team, both remnants of what the Avengers once were.
Starting Over
With the Avengers in shambles, Tony needed a new sense of purpose. Thus, he took on a protégé in the young Peter Parker. He saw much of himself in Peter, a poor kid from Queens with genius-level intelligence. Determined not to become the harsh adult Howard Stark had been, Tony began his relationship with Peter as the cool adult, outfitting him with a technologically advanced Spider-Man suit. Still, Tony couldn’t hide his protective instincts and constantly advised Peter to keep a low profile in his duties as a Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
It is in Tony’s mentorship of Peter that we see one of Tony’s most positive attributes – his ability to adapt and learn from past experiences. We’ve gotten glimpses of this in the past, but it’s now on full display with Peter’s Spider Suit. There are two features of the suit of particular note: the built-in heater and the automatic parachute. During the Extremis incident, Tony found himself stranded in the snowy mountains of Tennessee, endangering his survival. And, of course, he’s been in danger of falling to his death twice, in his first flight of the Mark II armor and coming out of the wormhole during the Battle of New York. Additionally, James Rhodes was paralyzed after he fell out of the sky during the Civil War. Learning from these experiences, Tony worked to ensure the young Peter wouldn’t fall victim to similar situations.
There was one thing, however, that Tony could not anticipate: the determination of Peter Parker to be more than just a street-level hero. If Tony had any measure of experience with teenagers, he would’ve known that they don’t simply take “no” for an answer. Alas, he continued to unintentionally belittle Peter while the young hero reported an increase of advanced weaponry finding its way into the hands of street criminals. Peter, for his part, didn’t help matters when he blew the cover of a group of FBI agents attempting to apprehend the weapons dealers Peter had reported, allowing the villains to escape. Angry at Peter’s disobedience, Tony reacts exactly as his own father would have and takes Peter’s Spider Suit away from him. Thankfully, Peter responds well to this punishment, taking it upon himself to prevent a massive shipment of Stark technology from falling into the hands of the black-market arms dealers. This helps repair the relationship between them and Tony begins to consider Peter as a future Avenger.
*Continued in Part Two*