Iron Man: Underneath the Armor
by Tom Burns

STORY SPECULATION:

In terms of story, we know both a lot and a little about Iron Man. To explain - we know that a large portion of the movie is the origin story, which we described above and which is featured heavily in the trailer. Billionaire/tech genius Tony Stark goes to Afghanistan to demonstrate new Army weapons systems that his company has developed, gets captured by bad guys who want him to build a missile, instead he builds the Iron Man suit, and he starts with the superhero smackdowns, freeing himself and starting his crime-fighting career. That’s maybe the first 45 minutes of the movie. What comes after is a total mystery.

We’ve heard from Favreau and Marvel’s Kevin Feige that the alcoholism story may be hinted in this chapter, but will be saved for future sequels. (There is apparently a trilogy outlined if this one does well enough at the box office.) We know that Bridges is playing Obadiah Stane, who’s described in the press materials as Stark’s former mentor-turned-competitor. In the comic books, Stane becomes one of Iron Man’s biggest baddies, donning his own Iron Monger armored suit to personally throw down with Stark, and, thanks to the film’s massive merchandising, we’ve already seen images of the Iron Monger toy, so we know he shows up in the movie.

However, back at the 2006 San Diego Comic Con, Favreau confirmed that long-time Iron Man arch nemesis The Mandarin would be the film’s bad guy. (For those unfamiliar, Mandarin is an Asian Fu Manchu-like power-monger who has ten rings - based on alien technology - that each have their own wacky powers... freeze rays, heat rays, etc.) But we haven’t heard anything about the Mandarin since, no casting, no images, nothing in the trailer. What gives? Clarifying the Mandarin’s role, Favreau told Comics2Film, "Mandarin is not the type of villain where, right off the bat, you could watch them squaring off ... You can't stay true to the books without putting off the mainstream audience without...as he's depicted in the books, I don't know if that depiction would work nowadays. Magical rings shooting, I don't know if that's the thing people are expecting. I look at Mandarin more like how in Star Wars you had the Emperor, but Darth Vader is the guy you want to see him fight."

THEORY: With that in mind, here’s how we see the Iron Man story playing out: Stark becomes Iron Man (origin story). He comes back to America, builds his proper red-gold Iron Man suit and pledges to use his power to help save the world, putting himself in the line of fire rather than all those young soldiers who died due to his weapons. However, his old mentor Stane wants to keep the weapons business going, taking his orders from a shadowy, amoral, beyond-wealthy Chinese warlord (the Mandarin) and using his connection with Stark to steal his new Iron Man repulsor technology to build even worse weapons of mass destruction for America’s enemies. (An act that Stane will probably find a way to blame this on Stark, perhaps making Tony a wanted man. This gels with the alleged Iron Man vs. US F-16s fight sequence that appeared briefly in the trailer.) When Stark realizes that he’s been duped and that his tech has fallen into the wrong hands, he suits up and confronts Stane, who proceeds to fight back in his Iron Man-knock-off Iron Monger suit. At the end of the movie, Mandarin remains the shadowy figure behind the badness, but Stark is alerted to his presence, in a similar fashion to how Daniel Craig ended things in Casino Royale.

Ah well, it’s just a theory.

OUR OPINION: We’re beyond-pleased that Favreau dropped the magic rings, but we’ll admit, we’re not sure where Iron Man is headed once the origin tale is done. Granted, Jeff Bridges makes a great bad guy (he looks decidedly evil with that shaved head), and we’re glad that Iron Man will have another iron man to slug it out with. But the Mandarin’s goofy history and the uncertainty about who exactly Stark is building Iron Man to fight (Osama Bin Laden, bank robbers... who?) makes the film’s story seem a little on the shaky side.

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