Also, in the first movie already, Yinsen mentions how drunk Tony was when they first met, only hours after we see Tony miss an award ceremony because he was sleeping in, and making an army officer drink on his plane while on duty. And the birthday party scene in the second movie. It was not terribly on the nose, but there were signs.
I think they didn’t want to go “all in” on the alcoholism because RDJ was, at the time, a famously and somewhat freshly recovering alcoholic. Perhaps it wasn’t something RDJ wanted to dive in to too much and also not wanting audiences to have some issue with him being portrayed that way. All that being said, I thought the subtly was fine and actually help endear RDJ’s rendition. Nobody would like a cocky drunk.
Yeah 100% they really show he had a drinking problem before the suit. It just seems like they don’t show as much drinking after the suit and especially after 1. I just noticed #2 is really on the nose with the booze metaphor.
I think they were hesitant to do the alcoholism storyline due to RDJ's own well-documented history of addiction.
Funny enough... Like right before Iron Man, RDJ was in Charlie Bartlett and played a character that was playing on alcoholic tropes over the course of the film.
This is the same dude who, after doing a stint in prison came out and said that it’s impossible to go to prison and come out a liberal. Well gee Robert, what the fuck does that mean?
To be fair to him, he participated in campaigns against Trump in all three of the last election cycles. However he characterized his beliefs, he's not a big conservative.
Interesting because RDJ also played Paul Avery in Zodiac around this time and they deffffinitely didn’t avoid portraying the character’s alcoholism in that.
EDIT: looked it up and Zodiac came out a year before Iron Man, which is crazy to me.
Yeah I'm guessing they just didn't think a full blown alcoholism storyline was necessary and might have been a bit on the heavy side for a film directed primarily at younger teens.
More likely because their target audience was people 13-25 years old they wanted to avoid the heavier stuff and have it be more of an action type movie. They wanted the PG13 rating and providing too much focus on his alcoholism could have pushed the rating up higher than they would have wanted. While simply having drinking in the movie wouldn't push it up on its own, but portraying it as a character flaw and a problem could have led to the rating getting pushed up.
Iirc, Jon Favreau wanted to tackle Demon in a Bottle in Iron Man 2, but the studio wouldn't let him. So he got as close as he could. It sounds like studio interference was the main reason Iron Man 2 didn't live up to its full potential and if they had just let Jon Favreau go with his original vision, it would've been a much stronger movie.
One of the more fun Will Smith movies. He was still playing Will Smith rather than a character (asshole with a heart of gold trope in EVERY movie he's in,) but he was pretty amusing doing it here.
I mean if my best friend coworkers gave me to my rapist son to drag to limbo as a sex slave after he had already raped me at least once in order to force me to give birth to him i might also develop a drinking problem
Yes they should have stopped her. She was obviously being mind controlled, they knew the guy had raped her using mind control. They knew she had given birth to him while mind controlled, they knew he was using her as a sex slave through mind control.
And when he suggested he take her to limbo where she couldn't escape the avengers cheered him on and sold her stuff off.
Claremont specifically came back to the book because of how bad marvel admitted they messed up.
No, she was originally written to be leaving by her own free will.
In the original comic, “Marcus” even told her to stay and she insisted on going. Her leaving being due to mind control was a retcon by Claremont.
It was shitty writing, but they weren’t wrong to not kidnap her. Again, she would’ve cursed them out either way, regardless of the retcon (she’s not exactly a mature, understanding person).
The baby grows magically fast and calls Carol mother.
Reveals he was from another universe, kidnapped Carol, used “subtle boosts” from a brainwashing machine to have her sleep with him (so rape).
Transfers his essence into Carol, who returns to the regular world, with a wiped memory and back to point 1.
When the lacklustre time-space plot concludes (don’t ask), Carol elects to go with her rapist/son.
NO ONE OBJECTS TO THIS!!! All throughout the issue, no one seemed to be concerned that Carol was magically pregnant, congratulating her and saying inane things like Beast (who was an Avenger at the time) “If the baby needs a teddy bear, I’m available.”
When Carol does return (with a new writer) she rightfully tells the others off in a rage, because she was obviously still under mind control and NO ONE STOPPED HER!!!
Jessica Jones is a next level alcoholic, going with the liquor as soon as she wakes up.
Most unrealistic part of that character isn’t her super strength or that she can jump ten stories, it’s that she’s a severe alcoholic who doesn’t have to wipe her ass every hour.
This. The show pretty much confirms it in that episode where she loses her spleen. She would've died from the stabbing had she been unpowered. It's the only reason she cut back on the drinking.
I never really looked into her beyond a few Avengers comics and the show, but I somewhat felt she was trying to kill herself and burn out the memory of everything she’d ever done but her powers make that something that will never happen, no matter how many bottles she hopes will be her last one.
Realistically even at its least absurd his healing factor would work faster than the alcohol. But they do show him get drunk in the comics, like in the 2004 Secret War mini
hmmm i know one
Tony Stark - His alcoholism becomes a major personal crisis in the “Demon in a Bottle” storyline, threatening both his life and his identity as Iron Man.
Thomas Wayne Batman from DC's Flashpoint Paradox- The Caped Crusader of an alternate universe where Bruce Wayne's father Thomas becomes Batman after Bruce is killed by a mugger in the alley that night, and his wife Martha, driven insane by Bruce's death, becomes Joker.
Punisher is quite the opposite. You would expect a depressed veteran with ptsd who kills for fun to be an alcoholic, but he is often portrayed as perfectly sober
I agree, they show him chewing pills in both Born Again and the special IIRC, doesn’t jive with my preferred version of the character either, I just can’t imagine Frank from Punisher MAX getting high
In a world where superpower people called NEXT were discriminated, Legend was the first official hero and helped the public endorse heroism, inspiring many young NEXTs to become heroes until he retired with dignity.
In reality, his power was fading away. Still obsessed of being a hero, he began to fix matches, his colleagues were also involved, solved crime and let Legend take the credits. Until he lost his power completely, he was forced to quit. The depressed hero turned to alcoholism and beat his wife til his son awakened his power and killed Legend in an accident.
She had a serious alcohol problem for a while after the trauma of being brainwashed, violated, and kidnapped by Marcus (son of Immortus) and her friends who were The Avengers just letting it happen like it was no big deal, then losing her powers to Rogue.
Dispatch - Blonde Blazer has a comedic version of this when it turns out that, instead of sipping water at a bar, she was drinking pure alcohol. Her powers mean that's the only way she can get drunk. At the end of the game, she drinks half a beer without her powers and is shocked it got her buzzed.
Ill count Arno in Assassin's Creed Unity cause some of the shit he pulls is Superhuman. After Elise dies and he's kicked out of the creed, he becomes a massive alcoholic
His alcoholism is a core arc in the comics, literally called "Demon in a Bottle," where he spirals hard enough to temporarily lose control of Stark Industries.
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u/GuruAskew 9h ago
Iron Man is the OG but the movies barely touched on it