Damien F trys to figure out Iron Man's sense of right and wrong.
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The thing is, Tony Stark is basically a neo-con (witness his role in the recent Civil War storyline, which I have been glancing at from afar and tutting at), or rather a comic book writer's vision of a neo-con, so it's probably no surprise that his moral agenda is actually kind of silly and incoherent. From what you say, the film seems to bear this out. Before he's kidnapped he's a pre-9/11 neo-con, selling weapons to the world in the name of an American-dominated balance of terror. Then he has his own personal 9/11 experience, and realises that he can't let proxies do all the work, but has to go out into the world and kick ass all by himself, like George Bush rustlin' up a posse and ridin' out into Afghanistan (briefly) before tackling Iraq. The incoherent presentation of the enemy only matches the incoherent presentation of Terrorism by the Bush administration: are terrorists weak lunatics living in caves, or are they a vast international conspiracy devoted to taking over the world and imposing a global Caliphate? Are we in Iraq to fight terrorists or are we there to allow the Iraqis to choose the government they actually want (which might perhaps include a few terrorists)?
I read this with interest, having a couple of days ago been coaxed into going to see the film with a friend. I agree that it's not a terribly morally sophisticated film, and one might have wished for a bit more exploration of interesting problems. But I think there are a few things to say in its defence.
First, there's a bit of a suggestion here that the film is internally contradictory in that both Iron Man and the film itself appear to espouse a certain moral outlook but Iron Man then behaves in a way inconsistent with this outlook and the film appears to endorse this behaviour. There is an element of this, but not a great deal, I'd suggest.
For example, Damien says that "[t]he Iron Man suit is armed with all manner of guns to rocket launchers, and Tony expresses no qualms about killing those who apparently deserve being killed." We need to distinguish between the two suits. The first one is certainly pretty heavily armed, and he does indeed use it to injure and kill people; but I'd say that's reasonably consistent and plausible in the context of the film as a whole, for several reasons. First, the materials from which he constructs this first suit are themselves armaments of various kinds, and the nature of the materials in such cases may tend to dictate the nature of the final product. Secondly, his main objective at this point is to escape from heavily armed captors who he reasonably believes intend to kill him, and even if we objectively don't accept that the life of one American millionaire is worth more than the lives of several dozen Afghan terrorists we can be reasonably forgiving if he takes the attitude that it's them or him and he knows which option he prefers. Thirdly, he hasn't at this stage had his full-blown epiphany, which seems only to occur with the death of the chap who helped him build the suit. So even if his behaviour at this point isn't especially moral it's at least not altogether hypocritical.
When it comes to the second suit, the criticism is much more deserved, but I would point out that the film makes some sort of attempt to deal with the problem. It's made clear that the initial idea is to make a suit that enables the wearer to fly, and that's it. What later turns out to be the main weapon is originally meant to be a flight-stabilizer, as we're told quite explicitly. He only conceives of using them destructively when, already in a state of considerable frustration, he discovers that his company is still deliberately selling weapons to terrorists. At this point he sets off to visit a terrorist camp and destroy said weapons. Arriving, he does a pretty reasonable job of destroying the artillery without undue injury to the terrorists themselves. When he finds civilians being held at gun-point he does then start killing off terrorists, but again that comes comfortably within what appear to be the film's moral rules since it's a necessary means of protecting innocent people. Where it really does fall down is the fact that he kills the hostage-takers with little shoulder-mounted rockety things that have no obvious flight-related function and must presumably have been intended as weapons when Stark designed the suit. Although that's still some distance from the suit being "armed with all manner of guns to rocket launchers", it still kind of undermines the 'it's only meant to fly' defence. But I still think it's worth noting that the film-makers have at least bothered to put the 'it's only meant to fly' defence in there in the first place, which shows some awareness of the problem of Stark looking self-contradictory.
There also seem to be an implication that the film is unclear or incoherent about what its moral stance is. Again I'm not sure that this is entirely deserved. It's possible to set out in fairly straightforward terms what the moral rules in the film seem to be:
- the USA is good;
- terrorists are bad;
- killing terrorists is okay, at least when they pose a real and moderately imminent threat to civilians and / or Americans;
- killing civilians is not okay;
- killing Americans is not okay unless they are evil super-villains;
- selling weapons to terrorists is bad;
- selling weapons to the US government is probably okay in principle but only with proper controls and mechanisms of accountability to ensure the weapons are used for 'good' ends (such as killing terrorists) and don't end up in the hands of terrorists.
Those rules probably accord pretty well with what a lot of Americans believe, and Iron Man's behaviour in the film by and large follows those rules. They even accommodate Stark facilitating the probably lynching of the bearded terrorist leader (which of course is a pretty close analogy for letting the Iraqis hang the not-wholly-dissimilar-looking Saddam), who is after all a terrorist. If it looks to us as though Stark's failing to live up to his new-found pacifism, it's because he's actually not a pacifist, and never says he is. We make that assumption because it's the most obvious explanation to an audience of arty young British thinking people for a maker and seller of weapons suddenly stopping making and selling weapons; but his conversion is actually a much more limited one that probably makes a lot more sense to the film's target audience.
Of course that brings us straight to what I think is Damien's main point, which is that it's rather disappointing that the film, having decided to ask questions about the arms-trade, comes up with such mainstream American answers without even exploring any other options with any sort of seriousness. That's absolutely right. But even here I'd raise a very partial defence by saying that we may be asking a bit much of the film given what it is. It doesn't tell us what the terrorists' aims are (well, actually it does tell us what their immediate aims are: they've been hired by Stane to kill Stark but when they find out who Stark is they decide he's worth more than what they've been paid and so they decide to force him to build them a big rocket; but it doesn't tell us about the over-all political cause to which this is, as it were, a side-quest). But if it did, wouldn't it then risk becoming a film about "is it right to sell weapons to these particular people in view of their political agenda?" rather than "is it right to sell weapons to terrorists in general?" And it's true that it doesn't engage very meaningfully with the point about the Manhattan project (though I must point out that Stark himself does at one point say he wishes he'd asked his father how he felt about his work). But then again wouldn't any remotely serious examination of the ethics of the atomic bomb be such a big subject as to entirely hijack a superhero action movie and turn it into something quite different?
Again, I don't want to say that the film isn't rather superficial in its treatment of moral questions and rather banal and unchallenging in its answers to those questions. It is. But at least it does (1) show a very limited awareness that the questions exist, (2) come up with a reasonably coherent (if irritatingly Bush-compatible) moral framework, and (3) make some effort to make sense of the apparent paradox of a chap using weapons-technology to destroy weapons. I'm not really sure it could have done much more while still being a superhero block-buster, just like Juno couldn't really do justice to the question of abortion while still being a cute romantic / tennage-pregnancy comedy. X-Men can do more because it does it by metaphor (mutant = black / gay / foreign) and therefore doesn't have to engage with the complex details of real situations. Spider-Man can do more because it concentrates on character and issues that occur on the ordinary human level rather than the social or political level. I'm not sure that Iron Man, given what it was, could really have done much better than it did.
Jamie pretty much sums up everything I was going to say about this (although I've not seen the film, I don't see anything inherently contradictory about "it's okay to sell weapons to some people but not others" - it's the same "contradiction" you get in pretty much all movies, books, or whatever with a strong action element. Good Guys pretty much always kill a whole mess o' folks).
What I actually wanted to say was that this reminds me of something a friend of mine once said about Batman Begins - on the one level it's trying to be a serious exploration of the nature of fear, but ultimately it's a movie about a guy who dresses up as a bat and fights crime. I think the simple fact is that superhero movies have to work with the themes which their frequently ludicrous premises allow.
Mmmm...I'm almost curious now, thanks to Damien and Jamie, but Iron Man has never really appealed to my imagination. I don't know, although I can get behind a man who wants to dress a bat and fight crime, I can't work up the enthusiasm for a guy who makes himself a robot-suit and blows up terrorists.
(I feel terrible - Jamie and Dan and Arthur have said all these insightful things and I've just made this pointlessly frivolous observation)
Jamie, I see where you're coming from. Your points on the first suit are spot on, but to be honest I really wasn't considering the first suit when writing the piece. Also, I suppose it's true it does come up with a Bush-flavoured morality (which is a trend I've noticed running through the comics for many years now). Stark arms terrorists and then takes it upon himself to disarm them. The problem I have with this is that it simply ignores the outcomes of these actions, in a pretty literal scenes. Look at your liking of leaving the beardy terrorist to civilians to the lynch-mob "justice" handed down to Saddam (which is something I admit I didn't spot myself). After this scene, Iron Man simply flies away, refusing accountability for what might happen. This was in my opinion lazy and irresponsible, on both Iron Man's part and the film-makers.
There was also a point I wanted to work into the piece but couldn't figure out how. At one point shortly before the fore-mention scene, Iron Man's computer-Jervis-thing distinguishes the terrorists from civilians and dispatches them accordingly. This is a horribly black-and-white approach to its subject matter.
There are two further points I wish to dispute. First, your argument that a more socially-conscious film would have spoilt its blockbuster fun. It may have been harder to make such a film, but not impossible. Since the Victorian days, good sci-fi has always been allegorical.
Second, the assertion that "we make that assumption because it's the most obvious explanation to an audience of arty young British thinking people". I'm Irish.
After this scene, Iron Man simply flies away, refusing accountability for what might happen. This was in my opinion lazy and irresponsible, on both Iron Man's part and the film-makers.
Are you sure that the film-makers weren't intending you to come away with the impression that Iron Man is a bit lazy and irresponsible? I've not seen the film, so it's down to those that have to make the call, but when I saw the trailers they seemed to suggest a bit of moral ambiguity on Stark's part (which would make sense given his not-exactly-clean history in the comics).
After this scene, Iron Man simply flies away, refusing accountability for what might happen. This was in my opinion lazy and irresponsible, on both Iron Man's part and the film-makers.
Yes, that was certainly the moment that put the greatest strain on my efforts to regard him as heroic. Arthur may be right to guess that at that point in the film we were supposed to be feeling a bit uneasy about his behaviour, especially since that's followed by what must have been quite a challenging scene for a patriotic American audience, in which a handful of US fighter 'planes try to shoot Iron Man down and he ends up (albeit accidentally) causing one of them to crash. Possibly we were only meant to come fully behind Iron Man when he saves the bailed-out pilot. It's hard to say.
Actually that brings to mind another point I hadn't thought about: the most morally problematic parts of the film are these bits in the middle, where he's engaged in his minimally thought-out anti-terrorist exercise. It gets much simpler when he comes back and gets stuck in to the 'main' plot of (1) stopping the technology falling into the hands of the clear-cut crazy villain and (2) trying not to get killed by the clear-cut crazy villain. Which I guess is one of the main things about super-heroes in general: much of the time, the thing that stops us regarding them as morally questionable is the fact that they're clearly better than whatever implausibly evil villain they're fighting. And that's a point that I suppose supports your argument more than mine, in that the least morally successful bits of the film are, as you've said, the ones where Iron Man is engaging with vaguely real-world issues like terrorism and the international arms trade.
First, your argument that a more socially-conscious film would have spoilt its blockbuster fun. It may have been harder to make such a film, but not impossible. Since the Victorian days, good sci-fi has always been allegorical.
Ah, well, yes, I wouldn't want to say it's impossible, but I think your point about allegory is important, and it links with my rather brief earlier comparison to the 'X-Men' films. The latter are genuinely allegorical, and I'd say that's what makes it easier for them to produce both moderately worthwhile moral / social commentary and super-hero blockbuster fun. What they don't do is what 'Iron Man' does attempt and, as you say, doesn't do very well, which is to have the characters get literally involved in real-world situations. The X-Men don't literally fight against homophobes or xenophobes, and they don't literally get hauled up before the Committee On Un-American Activities. If they did, then I'd say there's a good chance those films would end up just as unsatisfactory in that respect as 'Iron Man', because when you allegorize you can both simplify and dramatize much more easily and effectively.
Second, the assertion that "we make that assumption because it's the most obvious explanation to an audience of arty young British thinking people". I'm Irish.
Ah, my apologies! Actually so am I, at least on paper, thanks to Ireland's wonderfully welcoming rules of citizenship. My new harp-emblazoned passport is in the post at the moment, in fact. But you know what I mean. :)
I'm just going to start wildly throwing out opinions here despite not having seen the movie because, well, hey it's never stopped me before. I think the thing about X-Men which is, as you say, genuinely allegorical is that although if you were to Take It Very Seriously you could say it's about social acceptance / xenophobia, what it's most convincingly about is being a teenager, specifically the sort of clever, socially-awkward, comic-reading sort of teeanger that I and, ahem, I suspect several of us here were once upon a time - feeling different to, and excluded from, the rest of the world. And because it's very personal it doesn't strain credibility. Whereas it seems to me (from my position of total ignorance) that using comic book heroes to comment on wider social / political issues only draws attention to how necessarily and inappropriately simplistic such commentary must be.
Mmm, yes, I hadn't thought of that but you're quite right. I guess that comes out better in the films than in the comics, in some ways, because (apart from periodic returns to The Original Point) the comics have tended to forget about the teenaged and school-based part of the X-Men scenario. Not that adult characters living in secret headquarters in a volcano / on the moon / wherever can't also be metaphors for awkward brainy teenagers, but less so.