The Politics of Iron Man

SPOILER WARNING. I'm going to assume that you have seen both movies.

The Iron Man movies have an interesting political viewpoint. At the beginning of the first movie, Stark was an unapologetic weapons-maker. He was injured by one of his own weapons but, rather than turn into a pacifist, he built a flying suit of armor and took revenge. His other response was to shut down weapons-making, but only until he found out how his weapons got into the wrong hands.

Given that background, it is easy to see why Stark is reluctant to turn his armor over to the government. He knows that his technology can end up in the wrong hands once he gives up control.

There are sub-texts in the movie about the government take-overs.

Neither movie gives you a good feeling about weapons-makers. Stark is out of control. His partner, Stane, was the one selling weapons to the bad guys. In the second movie, Hammer's main motivation is to sell weapons to the government and to show up Stark. He is willing to do this through illegal and unethical means.

In the first movie, Stark was more interested in building his armor as a means of personal flight. The weapons potential was an afterthought (although he did build a tank-killing missile into his suit and his suit in the second movie had a lot of drone-killing gimmicks). When the army got a hold of a suit, the first thing they did was "weaponize" it which implies that they agreed with Stark that the suit alone was not exactly a weapon.

Whiplash told Hammer that drones are better. He was right in general. If there is no one in the suit then no one will be killed if the suit is destroyed. Also, in the context of the movie, drones were better because one person could take over all of them. They were destroyed pretty easily but, after all, they were built by Hammer.

There are parallels between Stark and Steve Jobs. Both are treated as rock stars at their company events and almost died of an unannounced health problem. There are also similarities to Larry Ellison from Oracle (who makes a cameo as the "Oracle from Oracle").

The Black Widow started out as a spy for the Russians so I was expecting her to be working for Hammer instead of for SHIELD.

The Stark Expo 64 was a cross between the 1964 World's Fair (including the location and the Unisphere) and Disneyland. Stark's father came across as the Walt Disney of technology. It was moved to 1974 so that Stark could be in his 40s instead of his fifties.

Rhodey had an interesting choice. On one hand, he was stealing a piece of valuable hardware from a friend. On the other hand, Stark's increasingly unstable behavior made this almost unavoidable. Stark's message was not to worry, he would use the Iron Man armor responsibly but he could not fulfill that promise.

What were Stark's plans for the armor after his death? He already turned his plant over to Pepper. Did he plan on turnign the silver suit over to Rhodey? Is that why the suit worked for him in the first place - it was meant to be his? Is that why it had its own arc reactor instead of running off of the one in Stark's chest like the others?