ok not to post a whole ass thinkpiece but. marvel is really obviously behind the times with having tony stark be the “heart” of the avengers because his kind of “fuck it, i’ll do what i want” style of masculinity is just. outdated at this point. like i definitely think as a culture in 2008 we were more open to reading that as fun and endearing, but over the past 10 years (and the last 2 or 3 in particular) that douchey-but-in-a-cool-way masculinity has really started to show itself as toxic in so many ways….
anyway. i think that if marvel let their writers have time to get closer with characters and somehow incentivized good storytelling we probably would have seen tony either a) pass the torch of true leadership to another avenger a while ago or b) grow more as a character and become a different kind of leader himself
tldr my hypothesis is that tony stark is becoming unpopular and stale not only because marvel films have less than stellar character dev, but because his kind of “rich douche who does whatever he wants with style” masculinity has ceased to be charming in our cultural climate
#and tchalla and peter’s kindness is the new heart of the marvel universe
Except Peter wants to be like Tony so really… If that’s the hero he idolizes, then clearly you’re missing something here
Dhsjkahdhska so he’s becoming unpopular not because the last solo movie he was in was made in 2013 and Joss wheathin fucked up his character in the ensemble movies like they did everyone else but instead it’s because he has a “fuck you I’ll do what I want”…. masculinity?
Have you ever seen someone so painfully unaware of the ethos of iron man or his movies that you want to bang your head against a wall
i shouldn’t be checking the reblogs and much less the tags of tony stans but holy shit
GOD literally find me a single post critical of tony stark without a “typical white dude” comment and I will eat my computer you asshole
i hate to break it to you but….it’s bc he’s a typical white dude
Hate to break this to you, but so is half the entire cast of marvel
The thing that gets me with posts like this is that…. literally all of Tony’s “I am awesome” attitude is…. it’s the thinnest veneer of a front. It’s such a wafer thin layer of “I’m a rich douchebag” that if you breathe in his direction the facade cracks right open, revealing his actual character underneath – a “piping hot mess,” to use his own words, who is riddled with anxiety and unneccessary guilt and a crippling sense of self-devaluation and an allconsuming drive to try to do the right thing. But so so so many of the marvel fans see his “I’m a billionaire playboy” facade and they take it at face value, and even when the mask splinters on the regular in front of their very eyes, they can’t see past the media persona that he projects.
And like. Also. It has been SO LONG since Tony has just said “fuck u, I do what I want,” I mean… That’s been one of the defining characteristics of his character – for years – that he puts other people’s needs and desires above his own on the regular. Like with ultimately meaningless things, sure, he does what he wants – takes down some fancy painting and replaces it with pop art of iron man, donates his entire art collection, makes a smart quip at a bunch of politicians and then drives off in his sports car, etc. But when it comes to important stuff? Like far out guys the dude hasn’t done what he personally wanted in a long ass time. He wanted to retire after Ultron. He quit the avengers, stepped out, wanted to buy Pepper a fucking farm and retire, for heavens sake. But no, instead, he kept right on being Iron Man, because people still needed him to be Iron Man, and [infinity war spoilers ahead] now here he is stuck on a planet billions of miles from earth with only Nebula for company. He wants to get married and have kids, but no, earth needs him, so off he goes, and now he doesn’t even know if he’ll ever see earth again, much less have the chance to get married and have a family. The guy hasn’t done what he wanted in freaking years.
So it baffles me that there are still so many people who are him as this billionaire white boy who does what he wants and fuck everyone else. Because that’s????? So not his character anymore. That hasn’t been his character since the funvee got blown up and he woke up with a chest full of shrapnel. And it stuns me that people are so utterly convinced by his absolutely transparent “I’m a spoilt rich boy” mask.
*waves you forward* it’s because they don’t watch the movies
Steve dealing with casualties vs. Tony dealing with casualties
That’s because Steve is an actual trained soldier who has a couple of years of active combat during wartime under his belt, and Tony is a well intentioned rich dude in a fancy suit. It’s almost literally night and day, war v. peace. Steve has a much healthier perspective, to be honest, for their line of work.
That’s…such a bad analysis.
Steve has an incredibly bad perspective for a peacetime officer. His whole perspective is that they try to save as many people as they can, but ultimately people die in the course of their ultimate goal: ending the “war”. Meanwhile Tony’s ultimate goal is to save people, that’s it. There is no ideology behind him truly, only the desire to save people’s lives.
There’s a scene in some generic foreign cop show, I can’t remember which, where an ex-soldier joins a precinct and on duty he and his partner chase down a perp. The perp is a violent offender and he runs down and alley and out into a street. There’s a few cars, a few pedestrians, but overall it’s not crowded. The ex-soldier has a shot on the perp, even though there’s a good few metres between them. He stops running, lines up his shot, and prepares to fire.
His partner stops him, shoves his gun down and screams at him for, well, they cut away but it’s implied a pretty freaking long time.
Because it’s not okay. There are different rules when you deal with civilians instead of soldiers. You do not have the freedom to make potentially lethal judgment calls. It doesn’t matter how confident this man was in his judgement, it’s not his judgement to make.
Police officers making judgment calls outside of what they should be allowed is literally every criticism against the police force you will find.
Soldiers do not make good law enforcement.
The real conversation in civil war is about needs. Is it peacetime? Then no, Steve can’t do whatever he wants. But is this wartime? Has the threat reaches critical that soldiers are needed, and are allowed to violate civilian rights in the name of restoring peace? Because then that’s different.
Literally a summation of civil war is that tony has the right perspective for a peacetime officer, while Steve has the right perspective for a wartime officer. It’s deciding what condition the world is in where the lines blur.
But please dear god don’t reduce iron man’s character to “a rich dude with good intentions”. Iron man’s character is so complicated people literally write papers on it.
I’m irritated today, so what’s with the ‘versus’ up top? Theoretically, both of these should points of view should work together…
Yes, there will be losses. That’s reality. One should find ways to cope… for one’s own mental health and to be able to continue helping.
ALSO, if there are too many on job accidents or too many civilian casualties? As the ones claiming to be the good guys, that’s something worth evaluating whether something can be done to lower those numbers. (Add in the fact that the folks you’re trying to help are the ones with concerns, and you should most definitely want to let them know they are heard.)
How about on my last reblog with Sebastian… not in character… it was a gifset from an interview… it took me 4 tries to type his damn name. I shit you not my tagging experience was:
Buc– *delete delete delete*’
Barn– *delete delete delete delete*’
Wi– *DELETE DELETE*’
(outloud)“What’s his name??!!” finally types ‘Sebastian Stan’
Smile It Won't Suck Forever 