Why are MCU fans so resistant against Iron Man using nanotech when it's a recurring aspect of his character in the comics?
Every single YouTube or Instagram video where an old Iron Man armor appears there's always tons of comments talking about how the mechanical armors are better than nanotech, simply non stop complaining about the armors Tony used in his end of career. Like wtf was Tony supposed to be using a suit Thanos could dismantle in one punch and couldn't scratch him?? Just firing missiles and repulsors from afar?
I simply don't get it. Tony's character is about evolution, he's always evolving, making a better suit, I always found it logical that his final suit should be able to create weapons like a transformer and be stored as a tiny thing. And much before the movies it was happening in the comics, Tony got a liquid metal armor before the 2000s, the Extremis armor was nothing realistic, Bleeding Edge was not only nanotech but also stored inside his body, and EndoSyn (Superior IM) was a symbiote like armor. So why the hell is movie Iron Man supposed to be stale in tech when his character is about growth!!? It seems like people don't understand the character and just want to see some cool visuals. And besides, Mk 50 fight against Thanos was the coolest fight we ever had and it wouldn't be possible without nanotech
I simply don't get it. Tony's character is about evolution, he's always evolving, making a better suit, I always found it logical that his final suit should be able to create weapons like a transformer and be stored as a tiny thing. And much before the movies it was happening in the comics, Tony got a liquid metal armor before the 2000s, the Extremis armor was nothing realistic, Bleeding Edge was not only nanotech but also stored inside his body, and EndoSyn (Superior IM) was a symbiote like armor. So why the hell is movie Iron Man supposed to be stale in tech when his character is about growth!!? It seems like people don't understand the character and just want to see some cool visuals. And besides, Mk 50 fight against Thanos was the coolest fight we ever had and it wouldn't be possible without nanotech
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But damn near every time Riri gets a suit operational, it’s scrapped almost immediately.
It was also to accommodate RDJ not wanting to wear the props for the armor CGI anymore.
I quite liked mark 50 in Infinity War. It feels powerful and the Nanotech is more than earned. Mark 85 feels weaker and worse. Regardless though, the most of older suits are straight up cooler.
This is not to blame on nanotech, but rather on the worse CGI quality in the last movies (Mk 46 suffered with it too)
Mk 85 doesn't even look like nanotech if you hadn't seen the animation
At least the iron spider suit had an interesting texture for example.
And it felt all the more great to see (and hear) the progression when he lands side by side with the War Machine, an Iron Man suit built from the Mk2. He lands with a tap tap while Rhodey lands with a thunk.
A sense of danger, progression, etc, is vital for enjoyment.
And in this case, while u think everyone would opt to have the nano suit for themselves, *watching* a nano suit is not as entertaining.
In addition we also have to consider the other side of the situation and that is not alot of people read the comics, so its possible that not knowing or not being used to seeing Iron Man elsewhere use Nanotech may be off-putting to them and they prefer how it was pre-Phase 3 and may also like the bulk the suit has when Tony has to put it on "normally" than the more sleek form that it has nowadays
Edit: why the downvotes lol?
The last place I'd take as reality of any kind is a Hollywood movie, Instagram, etc.
Bcs the MCU did Iron Man pretty perfectly
And while Iron Man wasn't bad in comparison to the comics, they did other characters very dirty.
I'm a huge Hawkeye fan (comic Hawkeye) and the mess they made of him or at times just ignoring he exists was jarring. They tried to do a weird fixit in the Hawkeye series but it was really muddy.
They took the Winter Soldier and pretty much threw his entire story out the window, though I gotta admit, they did damned good with it.
With Tony, they did damned good getting him right but you gotta admit that at times, the MCU forgot who he was. IM3 finally remembered, though it was awkward, and in TWS, that scene where Tony goes up against Bucky after he'd been triggered and deals with the gun was gorgeous. Tony designed weapons - he'd know that, and that was a sweet moment.
>the MCU forgot who he was
Idk if it's this but I feel like Infinity War just popping up with his strongest and most advanced armor from nothing was bad. We didn't see him build it, how, why, like we've seen all his development in those movies, even the development of Mk 42, but with his last most important tech we got nothing
I get the choice, I'm fine with it, but you asked why people didn't like it... And the answer is "no more sick suit up sequences"... arguably the brief case suit up sequence in IM2 is the most fun part of that movie... Without it that is less enjoyable... Imagine how much more fun endgame could be with one! Lol
It's not like he'd make nanotech make sense, he never did with any of his armors, titanium and gold alloy doesn't make a suit as indestructible as his, he just said some stuff and we accepted. But seeing him make the thing and trying to explain how it works, even in pure fiction, makes it understandable at least
It was a straight jump from mechanical to nano-suite with zero explanation. Audience didn’t see any struggle or effort hence everyone was like “meh, yeah sure”.
That wristwatch was the final clue in imo, because what came next was his armor morphing out of his chest piece + his jacket + his glasses.
He already HAD the nanotech suit in civil war, he just perfected it by infinity war.
Edit: and as a matter of fact, when he takes the shot at Bucky, he is able to retract the helmet to free aim, something he’s not able to do in other suits
Also, good point about the helmet becoming a mechanical hoodie on toggle.
As quickly became a feature for several other heroes
Nanotechnology or otherwise
Sure, Hank developed the Pym particle and a suit that could utilize it. But the way the helmets got, almost implied Tony invented/ perfected nano technology and silently lent it to Pym for his suits and maybe Shuri in Wakanda, or they swapped notes and co-developed the tech
I doubt it, but I believe Riri's is more reminiscent of Tony's earlier suits, but the fact it retracted as good as an actually Iron Man suit or opens up like Iron Man 3 suits is almost unrealistic in how impressive she was able to develop that level of mechanical operation on her own (I understand it is scifi/ comic based).
Tony was able to fix his first car engine at like 5 or whatever and reverse engineered his own arc reactor in his (insert Tony's age in the first Iron Man).
I'm not saying Riri can't be a prodigy, but to be essentially on Tony's level at her age is interesting considering he's never directly mentored her that I know of in the MCU, just funded a lot of projects for the university
I guess I thought that was the explanation, Tony must have learned from wakanda, who already had Nano tech.
We're so involved with Tony building and testing other things but than we just miss that huge jump in technology.
Personally i think the nanotech is pretty sweet
Those of us who are old enough to remember judge Dredd were pissed off because Stallone kept taking off the helmet. I guess secret identities aren’t as big a deal in the mcu but still, keep your mask on.
There isn’t any real logic.
It'd work because Iron Man is a superhero and he can punch the bad guys.
For me…
#It works
Nano tech suits = invincible magic.
Nanotech makes sense as the natural evolution of him advancing his tech in the story, and is cool the first couple times you see it, but for me quickly became the case that the amorphous CGI wash of the nanotech spreading to assemble simply wasn’t as satisfying to watch.
I think a secondary aspect is that it feels less special to me as an audience member because we didn’t see the progression to it. For a long time we got to see each new armor set: you saw the through-line for the suit version within 1, from 1 to 2, and so forth, but suddenly we’re left out of witnessing his progression for a while and then he just has this performing perfectly going into Infinity War. I wish we got to see something of him developing it instead of having all his tech advancement happen offscreen in later films he was in.
Metals to nanotechnology. In the MCU it took him like less than 10 years. Nantes isn’t the problem the problem is they jumped the gun and we miss out on everything in-between we saw in the comics.
Like his first suits in the mcu were mechanical armors, in the comics it was some magic clothing that would turn solid or change shape when activated. And then he could go toe to toe against the Hulk with it. It doesn't get much more fantastical than that
The bigger issue for me is that it was never introduced as a tech improvement that Stark had to work for, he just suddenly had it. And it feels like it was introduced to make the animators jobs easier more than anything else. This gets magnified that pretty much every remotely tech advanced hero is now using nano tech. And it has largely been used as a lazy way to have the actor suit up.
END COMMUNICATION
Honorable mention: Bucky's original mechanical arm with its little whirring power-up sound. I LOVED that.
Second honorable mention: Tony's briefcase suit.
Third honorable mention: That thunk of the Iron Man mask dropping into place over Tony's face.
They're all just so much cooler than the nanotech.
Even Thor got Nanotech style helmets. (I don't know if they were actually Nanotech but they used that same lazy animation.)
Also the initial suit ups were sick.
Between him, Star Lord, Tchala, and Visions cape they all look very samey
If his armor was more liquid like his Extremis Symbiote armor it would be great if that's what set him apart.
1) People can not like something they did in the comics.
2) Not liking nano-tech doesn't mean that they want the tech to be static. There are other types of technology to demonstrate progression.
3) Disliking the execution of nano-tech doesn't mean they wouldn't like it executed in a different way.
Anyway, there's two reasons I don't like it:
1) As others have mentioned, it feels sort of weightless compared to hard machinery. I think this could've simply been resolved by having the nanotech form robust components that then come together more like machinery. As it stands, there's not much visually different in his suit-up from any form of magic we have seen. I'd like more diversity in that.
2) It becomes the defacto handwaved for any gadget or upgrade Tony needs for the moment, almost like a green lantern ring for the writers. I like seeing Tony's process where a suit gets totalled and he has to problem solve in the workshop and come up with solutions/contingencies. Even something as simple as the icing problem becomes a satisfying arc in Iron Man I. Or seeing the Hulkbuster as a direct consequence of Avengers was great, and could've even been developed a hair more. Other than getting the Infinity Stones, it would've been satisfying to see a narratively underscored callback or two when fighting Thanos in Endgame. It would be great to see how Tony has prepared to fight an opponent who bested him before, and the unsuspecting opponent who is facing Tony for the first time. The seeds for this obviously would've needed to be planted in Infinity War as well. But anyway, nanotech kind of handwaves the nuances and ingenuity of Tony's engineering that can be more fun to explore.
I personally would not mind some form of Extremis to have been nano/bio tech. Maybe Tony has a light stealth nano tech between his body and armor. Nano tech maybe is too light to be armor but can provide better integration and some boosts in its own right.
and even some that is just isn't really adaptable to films. - a LOT of the best concepts in the X-Men would not work in Film because of the nature of the storytelling -- long-form soap drama vs 2 hour spectacles.
iron man is at his best in the comics when it's a cerebral examination of the limitations of man and the reliance on tools but the MCU has NOT taken that approach. Iron Man is not about limitations, it's about charisma and talent. Avengers doesn't feature a man struggling to keep up with his super-powered pals, it's about a showman stealing every room he enters and becoming the leader of the Avengers while allowing Steve to take the role of Cheerleader. Phase 2 and 3 Iron Man is about a man fearing the loss of that confidence as THAT is what Iron Man is - and then regaining it as he "BECOMES" the iron man with the nano-suit in Infinity War.
MCU Iron Man never truly earns that development, because that wasn't what we appreciated from him - it wasn't what we needed.
The nanite t-shirt was just too basic visually speaking compared to what came before.
Is the arc reactor real? No. Is it ok to buy into that one bit of sci-fi to power and justify the rest of IM tech? Sure! But the nano tech is just a step too far.
Also the idea that the entire suit (with all its mass and volume) fits into that one tiny box in his chest and he can go on a casual jog as though it only weighs a couple pounds or less... Too much and it's not necessary.
Lastly, the MCU isn't the comics. There's no uncle Ben, there no Osborn's, Wanda/Pietro aren't mutants and aren't the children of magneto. It's a different world that lives by its own rules.
Visually, I prefer the non-nanotech armor.
tbh, the only Iron Man I have ever cared about is RDJ Iron Man, precisely because of tomfoolery like this. I do not care in the least about his suit or any of the technology and whatnot. Some people like that stuff; I very much do not.
Also comics Tony Stark is so sooo soooo boring. (Or WAS, I guess, as he has now involved into RDJ Iron Man, which can only be an improvement.) It was v. difficult for me to get through a lot of the Avengers issues because he's basically co-lead with Cap a lot of the time and SO BORING, A BORING REPUBLICAN (I said it). And don't even get me started on Civil War Iron Man aka maybe most evil supervillain ever? Second-worst thing Marvel has ever done after One More Day.
On that note, I *do* really hate Spidey getting nanotech or general Iron Man bullshit (yes, I DO hate the Iron Spider suit. Particularly the part that tries to kill Peter if he switches sides; certainly an annoying glitch) in the MCU.
But that's all part of my bitter sullen fangirl fury that Iron Man acted as MCU Spidey's mentor figure, when in the comics it is (OBVIOUSLY) Cap, as the two share the exact same values, and it makes ZERO SENSE besides hero-worship that he's Team Tony in MCU Civil War, like is he going to be getting the U.N.'s permission to save the bodega cat from a grease fire? and WHAT THE FUCK at Tony's legacy satellite tommy-guns in Far From Home???? Those are LITERALLY exactly what Cap almost died to destroy in Winter Soldier, man ALIVE
Okay, I'm okay.
In conclusion, everyone needs to read Maximum Carnage again. [I'm serious.](https://static0.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/spectacular-spider-man-202-6.jpg)