People tend to give me an incredulous look after I tell them that I’m not a huge fan of Iron Man. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s in any way an actively bad movie. Robert Downey Jr. has an irresistible and irreplaceable charm as Tony Stark. Jon Favreau is an excellent director who really knows how to integrate practical effects with CGI ones. Hell, even Gwyneth Paltrow is pretty enjoyable in it. Why don’t I love it, then? The villain (Jeff Bridges) is kind of boring.
He’s a power hungry weapons manufacturer who is motivated by stock price; that’s too white collar to be even remotely intimidating. So obviously Favreau and company upped the villain ante for Iron Man 2, right? Well, kind of. Technically there is more than one villain this time around, but the first is just another power hungry weapons manufacturer (Sam Rockwell) who is motivated by envy. The second is a crazy Russian engineer (Mickey Rourke) with a bird obsession whose beef with Tony Stark boils down to a patent dispute. Thrilling stuff. It’s a good thing, then, that both movies have fantastic action scenes to make up for their uninspired villains.
But imagine if Iron Man not only contained fantastic action, but a villain that was actually threatening. Now this isn’t a list of characters from the comics I think would make more interesting villains, this is a list of characters from various movies that I’d love to see Iron Man fight; even if it doesn’t make any logical or legal sense.
The Iron Giant
Considering how tech-heavy the franchise is, it’s inevitable that Iron Man continues to fight other people/automatons made of metal. There are very few from the film world that he could go toe-to-toe with, but the one to beat is definitely The Iron Giant. He’s soft and friendly when he’s just chatting it up with curious kids, but once the Iron Giant is activated by his commie controllers, he becomes the army-destroying wet dream of weapons manufacturers everywhere. As for how fair the fight would be…it would probably be pretty even. Iron Man certainly has an edge considering how small and snappy he is, but the Iron Giant actually has him out gunned.
Winner: Iron Man – Unfortunately. I’d love to see the Iron Giant blast him to smithereens, but the Mark IIII Iron Man suit is probably quick enough to dodge his stacked firepower all day long.
The Martians from War of the Worlds
Let’s assume for a second that the Martians have found a way around being killed off by the microbes in Earth’s water supply. I’d say it would be a pretty great match-up to see Iron Man have to go against fleets of Tripods. Not because I think their design would be particularly effective against the Mark III (he could probably make it a bipod with a quick blast), but because I’d like to actually see a villain that A) has no emotional investment in Tony Stark and B) is happy to kill off entire cities of people. That’s another problem with this film franchise. The villains really are just threats to Iron Man and not the general public. Only when you find a nemesis who will kill innocent people have you really got yourself a villain.
Winner: Tie. Iron Man could no doubt eventually eradicate all of the Martian Tripods, but he couldn’t do it on a global scale with any kind of quickness. While he’s busy saving Queens, New York, everyone else on Earth is being either killed or harvested.
The Terminatrix from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
As noted, I’ve kind of gotten bored with the idea of Iron Man always fighting robots, but I’m going to toss out the Terminatrix as a contender simply because I’d like to see the playboy that is Tony Stark have to go up against a women. Beyond that, however, Iron Man has a pretty great chance at getting his ass kicked considering one of her abilities is to take over the electronics system of anything she touches.
Winner: Iron Man – Terminatrix should be able to take over his suit and just kill him with it but obviously that would be kind of boring, so we’ll assume that the innovative Stark figures out a way to prevent such beat downs. After that it’s a pretty balanced rumble between the two. Both have quick, powerful weapons, but both are also small and versatile and could dodge attacks quite well. Iron Man gains the winning edge, however, seeing as he can actually fly and the Terminatrix needs to hijack a vehicle before she can take to the skies.
Snooty Usher from Spider-Man 2
As much as I would love to see Ash from the Evil Dead series go at Iron Man with a chainsaw, he’s not the first Bruce Campbell role I’d love to pit against the eccentric billionaire. As Campbell once pointed out in an interview, his character of the Snooty Usher is indeed the only person to have ever defeated Spider-Man in Sam Raimi’s films. Now, I’m not proposing that Snooty Usher fight Iron Man when the latter is all suited up, but I would LOVE to see him foiling the cocky, entitled Tony Stark at several points throughout the film. Stark needs a whopper before he can take the stage? How about Campbell as the cook who refuses to serve him one. Or how about Campbell playing a bartender who refuses to pour Tony Stark a drink because he left his driver’s license at home. The economy is in a recession, after all, who knows how many jobs a Snooty Usher needs to take on just to get by. It’s genius, I tells ya’.
Winner: Snooty Usher – He just can’t lose.
Captain Nemo from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
I took away only one thing from the mess that is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Captain Nemo is a badass. Not only is a lethal fighter, but he also happens to be a madman inventor not unlike Tony Stark. Sure, there’s a bit of a time period disparity going on, but let’s not worry about that. Let’s instead think about Nemo’s advantages. For one, he’s based underwater, so Stark would have to invent an aquatic version of his suit (which I have no doubt exists in the comics). And even then, he’d have to deal with Nemo’s incredibly advanced submarine, the Nautilus.
Winner: Captain Nemo – Think about it. He already has a home field advantage and has proven as equally capable an inventor as Stark, so one would presume it wouldn’t be too hard for Nemo to somehow strip Iron Man of his precious suit. How he’d do that is unclear, but I’m going to go with a swarm of his controllable squid ripping it off his body piece-by-piece with their powerful tentacles. Assuming Iron Man even survives having his armor torn from him underwater, Nemo would quickly dispatch him in close-quarters combat with his sword. That’s right, Captain Nemo kills Iron Man. Someone get me to Hollywood, pronto.
