Over the weekend, “Black Panther” co-writer Joe Robert Cole was speaking at a “Superhero Science” panel at SXSW, and he had some surprising things to say about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. According to the writer, if “Iron Man” was released today, we probably wouldn’t have the MCU as we know it.
According to a report from Indie Wire, Cole said, “Think about where we are now, with this very vapid, unintelligent president and our world is crackling on the edges because of that. Think back to Tony Stark, him being douchey and being okay. If that character, Stark, was created in a movie today, I wonder if the response would be like, ‘Oh, it’s cool that he’s douchey and disrespectful to women … That’s fine.’ I think we’re at a different place. I think it’s a better place.”
Whether you agree or not with his politics, there’s no denying that Cole is onto something with this statement. Looking back at 2008’s “Iron Man,” fans were all too eager and happy to root for Tony Stark, a boozing, womanizing, billionaire weapons maker. Ten years later, can you think of a worse person to root for?
Of course, that description of Tony Stark is very reductive, and doesn’t include the whole character arc that leaves him a changed man. However, even in later appearances, Tony Stark has been shown to be a rich, loud-mouthed, douchey billionaire. The only reason we give him a pass is because we know that Iron Man is a great character and we’ve grown to accept his flaws over the last 10 years.
With “Wonder Woman” and “Black Panther” giving future filmmakers the blueprint for making socially relevant, crowd-pleasing superhero films, it’s probably for the best that Tony Stark, and the old guard of characters, are exiting soon enough, ushering in a new crop of heroes.
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Maybe he walked out before the Iron Man title card which clearly shows Tony forced to contend with his legacy as he is about to be forced to make his deadliest weapon for terrorists. When Yensin (?) dies after telling Tony, “Don’t waste your life.” there is a seismic character change in Stark. I mean, I get it, Stark is kind of a douchey character, but so was Black Panther in Civil War.
Pot shots don’t need to be taken, people are speaking to what they want with their wallets. BP BO is a testament to that.
News flash! Its ok to empathise with a ‘rich, loud-mouthed, douchey billionaire’!
Yet again, I repeat, this PC must stop! We are slowly getting to the point that if your film is not about diversity, colour, feminism, or anything political, people do not want to know about it. Beware the fucking zeitgeist. It’s already becoming tiresome, fascistic, and downright frightening.
He’s sort of right. The pussies and retards today definitely have trouble processing the idea of a flawed, complex character.
This may be true, but it’s also true of almost every movie. To understand a movie’s importance and success, you sort of need to understand the time period it was released in, even if it’s the recent past. Just like Gone With the Wind isn’t viewed in the same way now as it was when it was released, some sense of historical placement is healthy. This is exactly what is meant when people discuss if a movie ‘aged well.’ The one thing that Stark, as a character, has going for him is that he has an arc at this point and we have seen him evolve a great deal.
False if true.