so now I'm rewatching Iron Man for the first time in, god, i don't know how long, and i'm having a lot of feelings already (remember when Marvel wasn't outright owned by Disney? look at that young Tony! lol digital camera) but right now after having rewatching gotg2 yesterday

i am cackling because of how many fucking times past me mixed up Jeff Bridges and Kurt Russell

SO MANY TIMES

and now SO FUCKING APPROPRIATE

me upon seeing Terence Howard: pfft who the fuck is that?

which is funny bc that was my initial reaction to Don Cheadle. I like Howard's Rhodey a lot, but Cheadle has given him a dignity that has become inseparable from the character

Tony has always had shit taste in sunglasses

for the record

CHRISTINE EVERHART hi Christine! sorry you get done so dirty! it was cool as fuck to see you back in what if tho!

"I guarantee you, the day weapons are no longer needed to keep the peaces, I'll start making bricks and beams for baby hospitals." It may be a glib sound bite, but it's also a viewpoint Tony was never able to deviate from: he always believed weapons were needed to keep the peace.

Iron Man was a weapon. Ultron - "a shield around the world" - was a weapon. Time travel was a weapon, the gauntlet was a weapon, and never mind how he deployed people.

HI JARVIS

it's funny that Paul Bettany agreed to be Jarvis on the condition that he not be a superhero. look at him now XD

Paul Bettany and Clark Gregg: two dudes who got small parts in this new superhero movie that probably wasn't gonna go anywhere because who outside of comic nerds had even heard of Iron Man and who are still are still getting work in that franchise over a decade later

loooooooool omg i did not know that

I'm just happy we continue seeing Clark Gregg. I am very fond of Coulson

also Christine Everheart does keep showing up in other movies as a new anchor I think?

well Idris Elba once wanted to divorce himself from Heimdall bc he didn't want to get pigeonholed and look at his career now

i do recall she's around a bit? but the bit between here and Pepper that is so blatantly about setting women against each other has never sat well with me

ah, well, that line didn't age so great I admit

it very did not

this is one of the movies where the captions transcribe the lyrics playing, which is great. i don't think i've watched this with captions before and i've already caught a lot more than i ever have

FOR EXAMPLE, I never noticed before that Tony actually asks after Christine: "How'd she take it?"/"Like a champ." That. That is a tiny exchange that speaks so many volumes about who Tony is versus the image he projects

Tony Stark (TM) is the visionary genius who nails every hot woman who crosses his path; Tony is the guy who uses projects and alcohol and sex to numb his trauma and can't handle human connection but wants his one night stand to maybe not think he's a complete asshole

for all he evolves during his MCU arc, he never really gets any better with people. he wants to and he tries but he never does

I'M SORRY

WHAT

A CHARACTER SPEAKS VERY BRIEFLY IN A FOREIGN LANGAUGE

CAPTION: (CHATTERS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

that character ain't white and that language ain't fucking French

gross

why not just say he was jabbering. we all know that's what you really meant

anyway

Tony's ". . . and I personally guarantee you the bad guys won't even wann come out of their caves" in re: the Jericho project is not better, but it's so strikingly in line with post-9/11 jingoistic rhetoric that it's also perfectly in place

anyway assume a certain amount of racism inherent in this first use of the Ten Rings in 2008 because boy howdy it was the end of the Bush era and you sure can feel it

it's one reason I really love the fakeout in IM3. it really lampshades the whole racism thing

it was at the time the best way to go about using the Mandarin for sure

YINSEN

there was this great post on tumblr about how Yinsen's sacrifice ultimately leads to saving the universe through Tony's sacrifice, and how that was beautifully in line with his likely heritage/religious beliefs

i wish i could magically find it right now

meanwhile: the body horror or waking up to find a piece of macheinery lodged in your chest

*of

wow i cannot get over how, in 2008, the presentation of SI weapons falling into the wrong hands was straight up "these Middle Eastern dudes are the bad guys." Such a snapshot of political anxieties, as transparent as all the eighties movies where the bad guys were Russians. An easy shorthand

If you made Iron Man today I think it would be East Asian baddies standing in for China, and Tony would be refusing to weaponize some kind of biological weapon clearly standing in for COVID the way that Jericho stands in for WMDs

"They call themselves the Ten Rings" i was gonna watch IM2 after this (I haven't yet bothered since the MCU sucked me back in) but I might go for Shang-Chi instead just for the juxtaposition

lol i am 23 minutes into Iron Man so will get to neither any time soon

Shang-Chiiiiii

I love that one so much

it was the first movie i saw in theater since before all of the everything

(prior to it was Birds of Prey)

"the bow and arrow once was the pinnacle of weapons technology." Somewhere, Clint Barton is feeling obscurely offended and he doesn't know why

Iron Man Mark fucking one

"don't waste your life" i cry

"I'm Agent Phil Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division."

he's the only one who ever says its full name, with I think the exception of Grant Ward once in the pilot to Agents of SHIELD

there was an interview segment where interviewers asked actors to recite the full name and nobody could do it XD

Heh, I remember that line from Ward, something like “someone wanted it to spell out SHIELD really badly.” Which, as of Captain Marvel, is retroactively the best burn on Fury the MCU has ever given us.

I mean Fury didn't name it XD he only named the Avengers. Howard, Peggy, and the colonel guy named it

/facepalm/ can you tell I was half awake when I posted that

well now I can :B

XD