"I Am Iron Man."

The Marvel Classic as a Medieval Romance

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Iron Man. Proceed with caution.

Photo by Nik Shuliahin 💛💙 on Unsplash

Now that I have set out the basics, we can finally look at an example of how these ancient ways of telling stories are still alive in modern Marvel movies. And what better character to examine then my favorite superhero, Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man. I’m going to write solely about the first film installment, Iron Man, although I do think that his entire story arc bears discussion, and will hopefully have more articles on it in the future. In this post, I’m going to focus on two themes, that really go together in a lot of ways: the identity quest and the journey to becoming a well-ordered man. In other words, how Tony Stark is a modern day knight on a quest.

Here is a brief synopsis: Tony Stark is a millionaire playboy who doesn’t care for anyone other than himself or that his company (Stark Industries) is making missiles capable of horrendous destruction. It is only after a chest wound that nearly kills him and a brief stint in a terrorist prison that he terminates his company’s weapons manufacturing — and begins building Iron Man suits. However, his less than trustworthy mentor, Obadiah Stane, doesn’t like this change of tune and wants to harness the power of Stark’s arc reactor - the thing that is keeping him alive - for his own purposes. So he steals Stark’s arc reactor and makes a huge super-iron man suit which he uses to terrorize the city. With the help of his personal assistant, Pepper Potts, Stark defeats Obadiah and claims in a final press conference, “I am Iron Man.

Northrup Frye says in The Educated Imagination that metaphor, which is the chief language of stories, is also the language of identity (simply put: this is that) so then most if not all stories are identity quests. The story of Iron Man is an identity quest. Tony Stark’s story begins as a millionaire playboy whose company makes missiles. After his stint in prison -incidentally a death and rebirth image - he changes to become more humane. But he is not finished with his journey yet, because like most of us, his pride and hubris, not a terrorist ring, is his real enemy, and it is what gets him into a lot of trouble in later films.

The characters in Medieval stories are visible souls, so the knight fighting a dragon is a metaphor for the everyman fighting all that is evil and ugly inside himself. In the final showdown, Tony Stark has to face Obadiah Stane, who is wearing his own version of the Iron Man suit and defeat the man who is representing all of Stark’s worst qualities (pride, hubris, greed, ambition). Tony Stark ends up fighting himself in the end, going head to head with what he could become i.e. someone using his own technology to cause pain and fear and not to help and protect. The question the story is asking of Stark is: Are you the heartless business man that cares for nothing and no one but yourself or are you a knight in shining armor, sworn to defend the weak and fight for right? I think Stark answers this question for us at the end of the film. The evil having been defeated, the movie ends with Tony Stark’s declaration of identity, “I am Iron Man.” He has found his true identity.

The quest for identity ties in closely with my other highlight: the well-ordered man. At the beginning of the story, Stark is disordered. He is highly intelligent (reason), building all kinds of technology with his incredible mathematic and scientific mind. However he acts on the whims of base desires (passions). A few examples: The first thing he wants when he returns from captivity is a cheeseburger, chastity is certainly not one of his best virtues, and he treats everyone around him with contempt and disrespect. He has no heart, so it is interesting that he receives his fateful wound in the chest. (And as an added bonus, he is nicknamed the “Tin Man” in the Marvel comics, recalling the character from The Wizard of Oz who is on a quest for a heart.) As the story goes on, we see him gradually gaining that third part of the tripartite soul, the chest, harmonizing the contraries of belly and head. He starts treating his personal assistant like a human being, he begins to form a moral compass, and his burgeoning will causes him to use his technology and righteous anger for good, and not for his own purposes. Nor do I believe that the journey to a well-ordered soul is complete in the first movie or even by the end of the trilogy. By becoming well-ordered and learning what his true identity is, Stark grows to be more and more human. And for those who like to find literary alchemy in stories, Stark’s first Iron Man suit is made of base metal, whatever he can scrounge together while in prison. But he claims that his final suit in the movie is “a gold titanium alloy”. He has become gold.

So in the end we see that those old Medieval romances did not die with the dawning of the modern age. They are still alive and well through such avenues as the Marvel Universe. The story of Iron Man is a Medieval quest for identity. Tony Stark is trying to discover who he is and learning to become a well-ordered man. This is why he is my favorite of the Marvel superheroes because his story has depth. This pattern of mortification of pride plays out again and again in Stark’s life, and every time he comes to the same conclusion. He must die to himself, and live and fight for someone and something that is more than himself. He is what we all are; he is an everyman, just like those Medieval knights of old.

As I said in the beginning of this post, this movie is so wonderful because it is a microcosm of the trilogy and perhaps all of Stark’s involvement in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I hope to have other posts on the other installments in his journey to see what else Stark must go through to become a well ordered man and a purified soul.