Iron Man plot holes?

May 24, 2008 12:39 PM

Movie Filter: I can't believe I am saying this but I couldn't follow the plot of Iron Man, or it just didn't make sense... ***SPOILERS INSIDE***

Ok so, Obadiah Stane hires terrorists to kill Tony, no reason for this is ever given as far as I could tell, the terrorists don't kill Tony but instead decide to have him make weapons for them... weapons that they appear to already have as it is revealed that Obadiah has already been dealing to them. Can anyone straighten this out?

Here are some possible ideas, none of them good:

1. Obadiah wants Tony dead for some general unspoken reason, like greed (weak!).

2. We are supposed to think Obadiah wants Tony dead for turning pacifist, despite the later revelation that he was trying to kill him BEFORE Tony changed (also weak).

3. The terrorists not killing Tony as instructed also makes no sense, Obadiah has agreed to give them Stark weapons in exchange for killing Tony so why do they need Tony to hand build them a missle?

posted by Cosine to media & arts (28 comments total)

The terrorists didn't realize it was Tony Stark they were supposed to kill. Once they did, they decided to keep him and have him build the new, more powerful weapon he was demonstrating at the beginning of the movie, which they didn't have.

Obadiah wanted Tony dead because Tony was head of the company. Stane wanted to be head of the company, so he could sell arms to anyone. As seen later in the film, he was willing to deal with anyone, something even Stark wouldn't do.

Summing up: the terrorists wanted the brand new weapon that Stark had just released. Stane wanted to kill Stark so he could have total control. The terrorists had some start weapons, but like with most terrorists, there's no reason to think they legitimately bought them.

Final summing up: It's a superhero movie, with a character named Pepper Potts running through action scenes in six inch heels. Don't over think it.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:53 PM on May 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

Ok, Stane originally hired the Ten Rings (terrorists) to kill Stark so Stane could get control of the company, the terrorists figure out who he is, and want him to build a Jericho missile, which is better than the arms that Stane has been selling them behind Tony's back.
posted by Oktober at 12:54 PM on May 24, 2008

Just to add to what Brandon said, when Tony's dad died, Obadiah was the head until Tony inherited and he wanted the company back.
posted by Deflagro at 12:55 PM on May 24, 2008

It does later on appear that Obadiah went and sold them some Jerichos even after they failed to kill Tony, which confused me a little too. After all, Tony busts some up when he flies over there. I'm not sure I'm really going to be able to reconcile it with myself, but I liked the movie anyway. Brandon Blatcher's last sentence is the way to go.
posted by Caduceus at 12:59 PM on May 24, 2008

Even if the terrorists could purchase the weapons from Stane (which it seemed to me they were; see the scene outside the charity event between Stark and Stane) having Stark meant they didn't have to bother. Why pay when they could get them for free?
posted by justnathan at 12:59 PM on May 24, 2008

Why pay when they could get them for free?

Stark was a genius, but he didn't have a mobile factory and quality testing equipment for building the large number of weapons they'd no doubt want.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:07 PM on May 24, 2008

Everyone else made it pretty clear why Stane wanted Tony dead. He just wanted the company.

The "build me a missile thing" is a little less clear. If I recall correctly, the terrorist video Pepper viewed on Stane's computer indicated that the terrorists wanted more money to kill Tony. I don't think they were keeping him just to build a missile, but hey, you have a guy who can. Why not force him to until Stane ponys up the extra money?
posted by phredgreen at 1:16 PM on May 24, 2008

Later on it was revealed that they had these missiles. Its also foolish to assume Tony can build anything out of random junk. Their best bet was to keep working with Stone, but this movie really needed to get started and a mindless double-cross is the best way to get things rolling.
posted by damn dirty ape at 1:29 PM on May 24, 2008

The desert dwellers agree to kill /someone/ in exchange for something -- probably weapons. When they discover that it's a guy who can make weapons, they decide they're better off having him make stuff than killing him immediately.

Tony Stark is a golden goose. Only idiots kill those.
posted by cmiller at 1:29 PM on May 24, 2008

It's a superhero movie... Don't overthink it.

Bingo. The thing is full of gaping plot holes (when the two guys in the clanking suits zoom up to the stratosphere in the final duel and our hero is almost out of juice, why doesn't he call his pal at the Air Force and have them shoot the baddie out of the sky?); to demand narrative coherence of it is like asking a Henry James adaptation to have badass special effects.
posted by languagehat at 2:19 PM on May 24, 2008

My biggest beef with the movie was this: Stane wants control of the company out of greed and ego, basically. He wants the power, but he also wants to sell weapons to everyone. He finds out that Stark builds a super suit, and he decides to have his egg-heads develop one too. Ok - he wants a valuable weapon so he can sell it. So, why does he put the suit on himself and go on a rampage!? If he wanted Stark dead, he could have killed him when he stole the Arc Reactor. His own flunkies told him that their suit was not as sophisticated as Stark's. What kind of moron advertises a nefarious plan to a super-genius, then arms himself with an inferior weapon and goes on a criminal rampage, then goes up against said super-genius and his superior weapon, FOR NO REASON!? I can't think of any reason, besides actually insanity, why Stane didn't slit Stark's throat, start selling the suit to the army or whatever and sit back with his company and his phat lewts.

A compelling villain is the meat of a hero's story. Iron Man failed at making Stane believable or sensible.
posted by chudmonkey at 2:41 PM on May 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

@chudmonkey--I feel your pain...but...it just has to be that way. It reminds me of the sequence in (I think) the first Austin Powers movie when Dr. Evil has Powers and Miss Kensington captive; he chooses to send them off to an enclosed area where they'll meet their death (which of course means they'll escape). Sitting there as Dr. Evil gloats, Scott Evil is beside himself:

Scott: Wait, aren't you even going to watch them? They could get away!
Dr. Evil: No no no, I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan... What?
Scott: I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I'll get it, I'll come back down here, BOOM, I'll blow their brains out!
posted by t2urner at 3:07 PM on May 24, 2008

It's a movie based on comic books.
posted by fructose at 3:13 PM on May 24, 2008

I didn't mean to send just that sentence. Anyway, it's a movie based on comic books, so maybe someone who has read the comics can comment on how the comic plots relate to the movie plot.
posted by fructose at 3:14 PM on May 24, 2008

Yeah, I have to say I had Stone fingered for the villain from the moment that Time magazine cover showed up on the scene in the award montage with Stone (first) standing a la Bill Gates "A New Era?" and then the next Time cover with Stone standing in the background with Tony, all bright-eyed and excited standing in front.

Stone wanted control of the company - so he could see stuff to anyone he wanted openly. He knew he was killing off his most brilliant inventor (e.g. the "golden egg" comments in the final scene) but he didn't care so much about the tech as that he would be in charge and could do what he wanted. Why else would he openly admit to Tony at the Gala that he had been responsible for locking Tony out?

The terrorists were offered $ to kill a random guy in a random convoy - but then they discovered they had Tony. Having just seen the Jericho SuperDuperWeapon fire, they had the bright idea to try to get Tony to build one for them while they extorted $$$ out of Stone.

The part of the movie that doesn't make sense to me is that Tony, the new pacificist, rather than creating a device to solve world hunger or make all guns stop working, creates something even more dangerous than Jericho.

Also, I thought that while it was very fun, it was a little too 70's Bond meets 80's action movie for me - down to Paltrow playing a weak Moneypenny analog and Terrence Howard playing Tony's sidekick. Still, I waited through the end of the credits . . . and I'll watch the movie that they teased at the end!
posted by arnicae at 3:35 PM on May 24, 2008

OK while we're all here, I just saw this last night, watched through the credits because I had heard there was something after, and saw in the credits:
Animals by (Some Guy)
and a standard All animals used on set were cared for under the supervision of the society for something or other.

Now this is very important: what animals??? I don't recall a single animal in the whole movie. Anyone?
posted by PercussivePaul at 3:53 PM on May 24, 2008

I don't recall a single animal in the whole movie.

In the early part of the film, I recall seeing the Humvees speeding past some goats or other livestock. There might have been other animals at the village, as well.
posted by SPrintF at 4:40 PM on May 24, 2008

So, why does he put the suit on himself and go on a rampage!?

Because he knows Pepper got away with valuable info that can implicate him for illegal shit. He knows he's got limited time, so he steals Tony's Arc Light (whatever the hell that is) to power up the suit and get away with at least some powerful technology.

Stane didn't go up against Tony on purpose, he went against the Feds who were coming to arrest him. Tony went the building 'cause he knew Pepper was still there and that's why they started fighting. It's also pretty clear that Stane was enjoying the power of the suit and was doing a pretty good job of kicking Tony's ass until he got greedy. But isn't that the entire story of him, having so much, yet still wanting more and his greed becoming his downfall?

what animals???

Weren't there some in the terrorist village/hideout? or in the village that was being attacked by them?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:48 PM on May 24, 2008

The part of the movie that doesn't make sense to me is that Tony, the new pacificist, rather than creating a device to solve world hunger or make all guns stop working, creates something even more dangerous than Jericho.

Note that he made a suit that could fly, extending on the promise shown by the repulsors when he made his escape. The repulsors on the hands are intended as a method of flight stabilization.

So, he didn't set out to make something more dangerous -- he was merely expanding upon his previous work. The "hands as weapons" concept didn't occur to him until he started to shoot up his own lab in a fit of pique. And he didn't think "I can use the suit to be a superhero" until he decided to use the now-upgraded suit to return to the Asian country and destroy the Stark weapons being used against the villages.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:08 PM on May 24, 2008

Obadiah shouldn't have wanted to kill Tony anyway before knowing how he created the miniature arc reactors that powered their suits.
posted by inconsequentialist at 5:38 PM on May 24, 2008

Obadiah shouldn't have wanted to kill Tony anyway before knowing how he created the miniature arc reactors that powered their suits.

Feds were after him. Kill the only person who build them, reverse engineer the design and bingo!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:50 PM on May 24, 2008

Its also foolish to assume Tony can build anything out of random junk.

Well, anything except a mysterious, glowing uber-pacemaker and a mechanized infantry suit.
posted by GPF at 7:17 PM on May 24, 2008

Thanks for all the input everyone. A lot of points were cleared up for me, I still think there is one huge hole though:

1. Tony wants a peaceful world, he realizes better weapons are not the answer.
2. He lives in a world were the vast majority of violence comes from the fact that everyone depends on a petrolium based economy.
3. Tony invents a fist sized power cell that outputs tremendous amounts of power through some sort of fusion reaction.
4. He decides to use this new, amazing, nearly unlimited power source to.... BUILD A BIGGER WEAPON... geez
posted by Cosine at 8:34 PM on May 24, 2008

He lives in a world were the vast majority of violence comes from the fact that everyone depends on a petrolium based economy.

No, the vast majority of violence comes from the fact that person X has a bigger club than person Y and therefore X believes he can beat the hell out of Y whenever he wants. Tony wants to be person A, with a club so damn big he can beat B, C, D, etc, etc. Considering that he's spent most of his life building better weapons than anyone, this isn't surprising line of thought.

Just remember, the movie had a woman running in six inch heels over iron grating while being chased by a giant robot and she didn't trip. Don't try to hard to apply logic to all of this.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:52 PM on May 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

He decides to use this new, amazing, nearly unlimited power source to.... BUILD A BIGGER WEAPON

This bugged me too. I rationalize it to myself by pointing out that Tony is just perfecting a pilot suit at first, and then it takes on more of a warrior purpose when he discovers Stark weapons being sold around the world behind his back; now he can use the suit to fly around putting a stop to that (all the stuff he said to Pepper about there being nothing but the mission now).
posted by cadge at 9:05 PM on May 24, 2008

I'm just gonna echo what everyone else said about him initially just making the (Mark II & III) suit for flight, not as a weapon.

A quote from the movie:
Virginia 'Pepper' Potts: [upon seeing Stark wearing a machine around his arm] I thought you said you were done making weapons?
Tony Stark: It isn't. This is a flight stabilizer. It's completely harmless.
[Stark is blasted back by the force of the machine]
Tony Stark: I didn't expect that.

So he had no idea it could be used as a weapon until he was almost done making it.

As far as the Jericho missile thing... My way of seeing it is that maybe they (Ten Rings) didn't know about the missile until Stark actually tested it out there. Which would be why they hadn't tried to buy any from Stane yet. Then they almost immediately kidnapped Stark, and realized who he was, and decided, hey, while we have him, let's have him make us the missiles, for free!

As for how they got them anyways... If I'm understanding the movie right, for the test, only one (of four) of the Jericho missiles was fired. So there were still some left, and then the caravan was attacked on the way back to wherever. Ten Rings were able to get Stark, so who's to say they wouldn't have been able to get the leftover missiles as well.
posted by Zarya at 1:41 AM on May 25, 2008

4. He decides to use this new, amazing, nearly unlimited power source to.... BUILD A BIGGER WEAPON... geez

Well, in the movie, you're looking at maybe a two-week period in the man's life. As I pointed out before, he starts noodling with the suit to expand on his most recent work. How do you know he doesn't turn around and begin intense research on the newly miniaturized power source (which, the film indicates) has never been proven to be economically feasible?

In fact, he tells Stane exactly that -- that Stark's company will abandon weapons and revisit the work on the reactor...

Besides, dude. It's a comic book. Comics are filled with examples of amazing inventions that, for story purposes, turn out to be one-time only deals. Captain America's impenetrable shield? The result of a lab accident. The Super-Soldier serum? Experimental medical research, and the creator of both shield and serum is killed before he can perform any additional work.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:05 PM on May 25, 2008

One thing to remember is that, being the first comic book movie about this character, it is following pretty closely the comic book version of his origins, while adapting the storyline to modern times.

If you skim the Iron Man Wikipedia article, you'll see a lot of parallels. This should explain a lot of the plot details you mention.
posted by qvtqht at 2:08 AM on June 18, 2008