By ALEXANDER WHEELER
Staff Writer
It was Jan. 18, 2008. I was 13 at the time and my dad decided to take me to the movies to see Drew Goddard’s Cloverfield. I had seen posters for it at my local mall and the nature of its advertising made me curious enough to ask my parents if I could see an opening night showing. This was the first time, outside of a few times where I would want to see an animated movie, that I had expressed interest in going to the movie theater.
Settled into our seats, popcorn and soda in hand, the preview had started. The usual green screen before a preview appeared and then I remember hearing AC/DCs ‘Back in Black’ come through the speakers. Then I was introduced to Tony Stark and Robert Downey Jr. for the first time. There was something undeniably cool and chic about the preview that had captured my attention.
I saw Iron Man on opening night May 2, 2008. I proceeded to see it two more times in theaters, using any and all allowance money I could spare. Iron Man started a trend for me, really. I began to keep all of my movie tickets and I can tell you that I went to the movies 22 times between May and August of 2008. My interest in film and the film industry sparked from the very first time I saw RDJ announce to a whole press conference that he was, indeed, Iron Man.
Anyone who knows me well enough knows I have an undying love for film and that I have a vast knowledge of the industry (who won what Oscar when, how much money a film made, and what movies are highlights/low points in each genre). I took my high school’s film course twice, studied two minor’s worth of film courses in my undergraduate career, and at a point kept an excel spreadsheet that tallied every new-to-me movie I would watch in a year (with some tallies totaling upwards of 150 per year).
As Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios’ grand cinematic experiment ends its first ‘saga’ this week, I wanted to offer not only a retrospective on what this franchise has meant to me and how Tony Stark has influenced my life, but also to offer my deepest gratitude to the storytellers that have made this journey something that has resonated with me deeply.
As cited by Alex McLevy in his own retrospective on The AV Club, aptly titled, “No one in Marvel’s Avengers universe has a character arc that compares to Tony Stark’s.” “No other character goes on as transformative a journey as Iron Man.” To be fair, Iron Man was the first hero introduced, so naturally he has had more screen time to grow and develop, however, Stark’s character development has been deeply rooted in his humanity. Stark finds himself faced with questions about his identity particularly surrounding his relationship with his father.
Stark lives in his father’s shadow and is consistently compared to him throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Stark’s relationship with his father is defined by the emotional distance that kept them apart; in Civil War Stark digitally recreates the last moment he ever shared with his parents as a way of coping. In this illusion he tells his father that he loves him. This moment is not dissimilar to one featured in Iron Man 2 where Stark’s father tells him, through Stark Industries’ archival footage, that “my greatest invention is you.” While the Starks’ love for one another is expressed on film, the ways in which their respective expressions of love for one another occur, are remote and utilize technology to convey their emotion. The emotional distance that Stark received from his father is, arguably, the foundation for why Stark is emotionally distance from not only himself, but from his partner Pepper, and from the world.
As Stark’s storyline progresses throughout the MCU’s 22 film run he learns that having open communication with his partner is important, that it’s okay to make mistakes and to admit that you’ve made them, and that you are defined by your actions, not by a suit of armor.
Perhaps one of my favorite narrative arcs to Stark’s story, and one that connects directly to the emotional distance between him and his father, is when/how he becomes a mentor to a high-school aged Spider-Man. Stark initially uses Spider-Man as a way to resolve a conflict with Captain America, however, their relationship as mentor/apprentice grows from there and reaches an emotional peak in both Spider-Man: Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War, respectively. In Homecoming Stark tells Parker that, much like Stark learned in Iron Man 3, “if you’re nothing without the suit, then you shouldn’t have it,” and that if anything were to happen to Parker, Stark believes that’s on him. Additionally, Stark tells Parker that he is using positive reinforcement with Parker in an attempt to break he and his father’s “cycle of shame.” In Infinity War Parker disintegrates in Starks hands after Thanos’ now iconic finger-snap.
I am willing to argue that Stark sees Parker as a younger version of himself; a way for Stark to correct all of the issues between himself and his father. In a way Starks’ MCU narrative has been a series of films that sees Stark try to correct his father’s mistakes while subsequently making the same ones along the way. Starks’ father creates the weapons division of Stark Industries. Stark shuts it down in Iron Man. Four years later, Stark creates an A.I. in the hopes that it sustains world peace, however, it attempts to destroy all of humanity. And, in my reading of Starks’ MCU arc, he mentors a teenager in the hopes of making a connection that his father didn’t, only to leave Parker “on read” for a majority of Homecoming. Starks’ attempt at fatherhood unknowingly mirrors the relationship he had with his own father.
I do not believe that it is a coincidence that Stark dreams of having a child with Pepper at the beginning of Infinity War, nor that they have a conversation about having a child. Stark has continually been looking for a way to leave ‘the fight’ behind and to settle his weary soul; he destroys all of his suits in Iron Man 3, tells Steve Rogers in Age of Ultron that “isn’t that why we fight? So we can end the fight? So we get to go home,” aligns himself with the US government regarding the Sokovia Accords, and then adopts Parker as his protégé in hopes that he can pass on the torch to a new generation.
As Stark has grown over the last 11 years, so have I, and over the past few weeks as I have re-watched these films in anticipation for Endgame, I’ve noticed that the more mature elements of Starks’ arc have resonated with me the most. Namely, Starks’ struggles with his emotionally distant father, his strive to do better than those who came before him, and his philosophy of mentorship. As a father-to-be, I’ve been thinking about who I am going to be as a father and how I am going to be similar to the fathers that have come before me. How much will I let my relationship with my father influence my relationship with my daughter? As I think about that very question I think about all of the student leaders that I have mentored over the past three years that I have been working in Higher Education. This metaphor may seem hyperbolic in comparison to Starks’ MCU narrative, however, I find it poignant to not only this article, but also to myself as a mentor. At the beginning of every academic year, when I review my expectations of my Resident Assistants (RAs) with them, a majority of those expectations are based on making sure they do a better job as an RA than I did. My ability to support them stems from the ways in which my first professional mentor supported me and the ways in which my father has shown me support over the years.
I am in no way comparing myself to Tony Stark, however, I believe that in this article I’ve been trying to thank him for a few key things: getting me emotionally invested in an industry that I love so much and for showing me that fatherhood doesn’t have to be as complicated as our relationships with our fathers; it can be as simple as listening to one of my students on a bad day and letting them know I’m here for them when they fall.
Similar to Iron Man assisting Spider-Man with rescuing passengers from a sinking ferry, I’ll be there to help my students and my daughter when they fail. I’ll push them to be better. I’ll continue to share my love of film with them, too.
