I’m not going to spoil the plot and tell you what happens. The movie was really good. Very entertaining, though understandably predictable. You know from the start that Stark will defeat Vanko. You know that the War Machine armor will kick ass. You know that Scarlett Johannson is in the movie because of her looks (in Scarlett’s defense, her crazy blitzkrieg at Hammer Industries was probably the second best female vs. multiple males fight scene I’ve watched, second only to Uma Thurman dispatching the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill Vol. 1).
The scenes are lush and epic, the technology is unsurprisingly bleeding edge. RDJ plays Stark well; he’s believably smug, and his mortality clearly weighs on him and only exacerbates narcissistic character flaws, which disconnects the audience from him emotionally and while it helps build his character, it also makes us care less about his impending death. Of course, this could be because we all know somehow he won’t die of palladium poisoning.
I thought Justin Hammer, as portrayed by Sam Rockwell, was very well done. He seems a clear Stark wannabe, his attempts to grandstand like Stark seemed awkward and forced, and near the end of the movie when he yells angry threats at Ivan Vanko, you don’t feel like he is any good at being angry; the passive aggressive character shines through.
But the movie in general had a theme I felt needs addressing: Tony Stark has Bill Gates Syndrome. By Bill Gates Syndrome, I mean that upon successful completion of a mega-wealthy empire, and having reached the point where he could literally never run out of money, Bill Gates suddenly became a born-again charitable guy. After years of cutting and hacking at competition, and aggressively marketing his products and raking in every dollar possible, he appears to have realized his legacy isn’t going to be so wonderful, and has gone on this world-improvement bonanza. More power to you, Mr. Gates.
Stark appears to have developed the same sudden sense of morality, possibly continuing from that revelatory moment in the cave in Afghanistan in the first movie. He wants to be remembered for something other than Stark Weapons, wants his legacy to be more than just the “Merchant of Death.”
But TAE asks: could Stark have done anything good with his life without his piles of money? It seems these rich men who turn good have one thing in common: they are really, really rich. It’s easy to exact your will on others, no problem to get press for your beneficent activities, simple to sway the hearts of others, when you are exorbitantly wealthy. Gates, Stark, and many other wealthy benefactors suffer from a singular issue: trust. They do not trust the poor (or anyone else) to manage money well, and so they believe they, in all their wisdom, can best help the poor by managing it for them. If Bill Gates wants to really do good for Africans, why doesn’t he just give all $33 billion of his Foundation’s assets to Africans and be done with it? Because he thinks he should micromanage his charity, both because he mistrusts others and because he fears losing control of his work will mean that the good that comes from it might not be associated to him. It’s called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for a reason! Why didn’t he name it the “Anonymous Donor Who Wants to Help Others Foundation”? Mostly because he doesn’t want to be anonymous. He wants the credit. Stark, in a fictional sense, is doing the same with his appropriately named “Stark Expo.”
And so I found myself sympathetic to Ivan Vanko, a little bit. Partnered with Tony’s father Howard Stark, Ivan Vanko’s father Anton Vanko had developed the first arc reactor, now famously strapped into Iron Man’s chest. Realizing the awesome, world-changing potential of the technology, Vanko had wanted to sell it, and make a fortune. Stark, on the other hand, wanted to give it away to make the world a better place. Howard Stark has Vanko deported to Russia, where he suffers an embittered fate. Then Stark goes on to build a weapons empire inherited by Tony, and the arc reactor technology, for some reason, never goes public beyond the one powering the Stark Industries factory.
TAE scratches his head. Why wasn’t the arc reactor technology taken public, like Howard Stark wanted? If Howard Stark wanted to make the world a better place, why did he build a weapons conglomerate? And what kind of funding did Stark use to build his empire? Probably Defense funding.
And if Anton Vanko had gotten his wish, and he and Stark had sold the arc reactor technology for millions, would he have then used that money to build a charitable empire? Would his son have spent his life as a weapons manufacturer, who then about-faced and tried to build a legacy of good deeds? “That should be you,” Anton Vanko says to his son at the beginning of the movie as Stark emcee’s his Expo on the television. Does Vanko mean his son should be the wealthy playboy…or the weapons conglomerate turned benefactor?
And so a conundrum appears here that gives TAE pause: can you not effect real change for the better in the world without wealth to back you? Certainly, Christianity teaches us that your wealth and the amount of good you do in the world is irrelevant as long as you spend your life in the selfless service of others. In fact, Jesus directly states that wealth is a hindrance to good acts. But pound for pound, someone who wanted to do good…for as many people as possible…needs a lot of money under them.
Readers of this blog know that my life goal is to develop technologies that will change the world for the better, much like Dean Kamen is attempting. But Kamen, like Gates, like Elon Musk, and like Stark…all have started down their beneficence roads armed with a fortune acquired from private capital. Start improving the world with an empire of money to back you, it seems, and you end up with a legacy like Edison. Try to improve the world without capital, and you end up like Tesla.
And so the question I begin to ask myself is this: do I build the weapons empire and let my children have the luxury of being the world-improvers? Though I dream of being like Tony Stark…am I in reality actually more like Howard Stark?
Anyway…Iron Man 2 was good.
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