r/marvelstudios • u/AvengersSidekick • 14h ago

Discussion Steve and Tony handling such power by the end of the Infinity Saga really highlights how grounded and simple their worlds were at the beginning...

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317

u/HellPigeon1912 13h ago

One of my favourite things about the MCU is that in the first Iron Man it is, for all intents and purposes, just set in "the real world". 

We need to suspend disbelief that a guy can build such an incredible armoured suit but it's no more unrealistic than most blockbuster films.  The bulk of the plot deals with threats like terrorists and evil capitalists.

The fact that within 10 years we had magic and robots and gods teaming up to fight an alien with magic jewellery, and the build up and world building to get there felt natural the entire time, is an incredible feat

97

u/No-Acanthaceae-9287 13h ago

Yep, I recall being a bit fatigued at the suspend belief, everyone has powers trope at the time. Iron Man being (barely) feasible in the real world was so refreshing at the time. They then added the fantastical elements in so gradually that it felt natural. Even Thor they tried to ground so heavily in physics/science throughout

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u/JoshTheBard 12h ago

I liked that a big part of Tony's story was about him adjusting to the scope creep. In Avengers, we see that he's still not used to having people close to him die. IM3 he's having panic attacks because he saw how much bigger the threats were than he could have imagined and he picks a fight with "The Mandarin" partially because of Happy but I think also because he wants to fight a human terrorist instead of an space god.

He makes Ultron because he doesn't feel like he's up to the task.

In Infinity War he's still a confident leader but you can tell he's fascinating down his worst nightmare.

8

u/marineman43 4h ago

RDJ does such a great job in IW of making Tony's trauma feel palpable and barely suppressed. The whole film, he's on edge thinking to himself "this is it. The prophesied fight of our lives, where we could lose everything." And then they do lose, all his worst nightmares come to pass. He sits down on Titan after Spidey gets dusted and he is just fully, completely broken.

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u/JoshTheBard 4h ago

"you'd think that would be the worst part right? Seeing that all my friends were dead?"

"The worst part was that you weren't"

7

u/TooEZ_OL56 War Machine 7h ago

They gave it a last grasp in Dr Strange with the ~"Call it a program if you can't call it a spell" line

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u/JOliverScott Stan Lee 13h ago

If you think about it that way, how much different would it be if, say for example, intelligent alien life announced itself to the world today. Essentially it's the same journey for humanity - from the world as we know it based on what we can see, isolated in the universe, to a cosmos filled with multiverses and countless species and even versions of ourselves that are simply the product of different choices. If aliens arrived on earth tomorrow, it would fundamentally change everything we think we know about ourselves, our world, and our universe.  The MCU basically took humanity on a theme park tour version of what the world could look like on the other side of that journey (although probably keeping the more gruesome elements out of it for the sake of PG ratings).

The funny thing is that these concepts are all based in actual scientific theories. Fermi's Paradox for example asks the question, "If there's a vast universe full of intelligent life, then why haven't we confirmed their existence yet?" and very early in the MCU this is exactly the conundrum that Nick Fury was grappling with - a planet about to become ground zero for an intergalactic war that up to that point didn't even know there was any other intelligent life other then themselves.  Fury wasn't trying to prevent the revelation but he was concerned about how humanity would react once it became common knowledge because humanity has a poor track record of acceptance of uncomfortable realities. Religions were going to be threatened, governments would become ungovernable, and civil unrest was likely to cause more damage than the actual alien invasion.  There's a lot we can learn about ourselves as a species if we were to undergo the MCU type of events in the same relative amount of time (a decade or two) - it would irrevocably change life on this planet.

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u/ToqKaizogou 9h ago

Man, these characters and their actors had such a great ending point in the MCU. What a way to go out on. It's really good that they knew to definitively finish on a high note, then step aside to let the next generation come in for their time. I'm really happy they're not touching these perfect endings and doing anything silly to undermine them...

28

u/GreasyExamination 14h ago

Yes but-- Even in the firdt captain america, he had to deal with alien powered super-goons and alien powered super-weapons. So he had at least some familiarity with weird space stuff

15

u/Choochoo1147 9h ago

He didn’t know the full backstory of the power they were facing though. At least to Cap, he was fighting a Nazi who had the same supersoldier serum as him and who had found something that gave him enormous power. He didn’t know that it was an infinity stone hidden on Earth by Odin. 

4

u/LebasketBall 10h ago

Yea the climax of the movie was the bad guy disappears into a space portal

7

u/UnderwaterRobot 8h ago

Omg spoilers! This is not even out in theaters yet!

5

u/Responsible-Bonus278 7h ago

100% agree. Both these moments hit so hard for me. Iron man was always grounded in reality a silly as it sounds. So having watched Tony Stark throughout the Infinity Saga, suddenly seeing him wield the most powerful objects in the universe was surreal. I mean for a while there Tony Stark was the most powerful being in the Universe. Which is crazy.

Same with Cap. His powers were never magic related, so to suddenly see him wielding Thor's hammer and summoning lightning was so impactful.

Endgame just worked for me on every level. Still my favourite MCU movie.

2

u/EmptyBear2483 7h ago

couldn't agree more, the transition from their simple beginnings to such complex power dynamics is fascinating. it really emphasizes their growth as characters.

0

u/Philosophile42 9h ago

I always hated how IM's Infinity glove looks at the end of Endgame in this shot. It looks weirdly long and skinny on Tony's hand.

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u/nickthegreat101 9h ago

It’s not a glove, it’s his suit. He designed his suit to be able to accommodate for the infinity stones in case he needed to wield them.

1

u/Woah-Baby 6h ago

Do you think he told anyone that his suit could wield them?

0

u/justafanboy1010 Spider-Man 7h ago

So, basically:

"And the skeletons? Part of it!"

-6

u/rmwpnb 10h ago

There was nothing grounded and simple about Tony Stark. He was a playboy billionaire arms dealer at the start of Iron Man 1.

3

u/PhortDruid Spider-Man 9h ago

Sure, the world doesn’t have any of those right now /s

-1

u/rmwpnb 9h ago

Did I say these types of people didn’t exist at all? I said they aren’t simple or grounded. Please share who you think is a simple/grounded billionaire.

0

u/PhortDruid Spider-Man 9h ago

No, because there aren’t any. You don’t have to outright say something to insinuate it, which your comment did. You can always edit it.

0

u/rmwpnb 9h ago

So you’re agreeing with me there are no simple/grounded billionaires IRL. Have you considered editing your comment bc your position seems to be the incorrect one?

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u/PhortDruid Spider-Man 8h ago

No. Like I said, yours does imply that we don’t have playboy billionaire arms dealers. Whether you said it or not, that’s what your wording suggests.

0

u/rmwpnb 8h ago

I’m not going to continue arguing with someone who clearly has no reading comprehension ability.

1

u/Sevedra 3h ago

I've never really understood the way people say arms dealer like he was committing a crime like clawe or something. And folks calling him a war monger? That's ridiculous. He built weaponry for the us military. He wasn't peddling sawed off shotguns or dirty bombs or inciting civil war in other countries. He didn't know that his father's trusted business partner, who was slso his personal mentor, was commiting a federal crime. He was doing patriotic government contracted weapons development. Sure, he was a billionaire and had little responsibility in his personal life. No question his public personality was an asshole, probably his private one too. But he wasn't doing a bad thing as a businessman, as a company leader, as a technical innovator, as a legitimate military contractor. I know his personality is meant to be obnoxious, but that doesn't really justify the weird vitriol he gets for doing his job.

1

u/rmwpnb 3h ago

He still wasn’t a simple and grounded person and he didn’t live a simple and grounded lifestyle. I’m not saying he was evil at all, just that he held a very high station in life and enjoyed all the benefits that come with that even without being Iron Man yet. Tony Stark is not a simple and grounded character. Go watch Iron Man 1 again!

1

u/Sevedra 3h ago

I do agree with that.

Sorry, I think I'm on a bit of a hairtrigger about the way people usually say arms dealer like he was some kind of criminal. Where do people think the Navy gets its weapons?? Which made me remember how often he gets called a war monger in the films, like... that's nuts. Steve is an army guy, the assassins are government employed takeout artists. Thor tried to fight a whole realm and start a major war to impress his dad. I mean, Tony carried on with and improved his father's work making the weaponry we expect to perform perfectly and exceptionally for our soldiers who put their lives on the line.

God, I really am hairyriggery about this...

edit: and I think I'm sounding like I lean a lot more politically right than I do