Iron Man (film)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

*** It's actually standard doctrine in the Army and the Marine Corps that if you're caught in the middle of an ambush, you [[Refuge in Audacity|charge straight into it]] and destroy the ambushers.

*** That's not my what my research tells me. If you're on patrol, it's true. But if you're in a traveling convoy, the actual protocol is to just keep going and not risk getting more of your team killed.

*** Plus, in the US military's experience, the people ambushing them often have less firepower or troops that aren't as well trained at short range combat; they use ambushes because they need the advantage of surprise to offset their disadvantages. Take away the elements of surprise and superior position by getting in close with them, and suddenly they're less dangerous.

*** These guys are the Ten Rings, on a whole different league from the guys the US military tangles with, along with the fact that they've got Stark Tech backing them up, then they have the upper hand in that situation no matter what. The Army troopers wouldn't know that when they came under fire and would react like they always do to mujahadeen, not understanding how immensely outgunned they were.

*** Since palladium is known for its ability to purify or absorb hydrogen in large amounts, and hydrogen is the basis of fusion reactions, the arc reactor was almost certainly supposed to be some kind of Tokamak.

*** The Russian translation of the movie never uses the word ARC. They simply call it a "thermonuclear fusion" reactor. How you can make a tiny reactor that you can stick into your body is not explained.

 

* Speaking of which, considering how unique it was, why didn't Stane hand it over to his engineers to replicate instead of popping it into his suit for the sake of admiring it?

*** Actually, constructing a tracked vehicle might be ''harder'' in these circumstances than a suit of power armor. Tony would need to manufacture an entire engine apparatus on top of creating wheels and tracks. The armor components are, for the most part, just reshaped metal plating and repurposed missile casings with powered joints - far easier to create, as all he's doing is modifying existing components and welding metal plates together. Also, wheels and tracks are not parts generally associated with missiles; Tony can pretend he's slapping together bullshit components to delay the Ten Rings and make them think he's stalling, as they've likely no idea what most of the components are that are going into the armor design, but if they see he's creating a wheel and track assembly and engine parts, they're going to recognize them and get very suspicious.

*** Another problem is that a vehicle wider than a man can potentially get stuck, as there are plenty of doors down there; tunnels are not known for their ease of movement for anything without legs and have inconsistent widths. A vehicle wouldn't be able to smash through doors without using explosives due to a lack of room to accelerate, and you're going to want to be cautious with explosives in an enclosed area like tunnels. However, something with sufficiently strong arms ''can'' smash down doors and pound through relatively narrow crevices in the tunnels.

* Heres a minor one and it has [[Fridge Logic]] and [[Did Not Do the Research]] mixed in, but at one point in the escape, the closest the terrorists come to stopping Tony in his jalopy of an Iron Man suit at the begining is shooting him with a Browning 50 caliber machine gun-one of the biggest and most powerful machine guns ever and is a machine gun that can shoot through concrete walls. The only way to suspend disbelief that those rocket shells that Tony uses for armor in the begining (with some big pieces of cloth in between) is to explain or expect us to know that the armor is some of that great "scientific breakthru" Star Trek kind of armor and looks thin but is really strong. If THATS the case, then you have [[All There in the Manual]].

** Stark is able to build a supersonic jet engine powered by a reactor the size of a coaster and can design inch-thin armor plating that can deflect ''direct hits from tank shells.'' I think coming up with armor plating that can stand up to .50 caliber rounds is not an issue here with the demonstrated technical genius this guy has.

*** Well, let's look at the numbers. .50 BMG armor piercing can defeat 3/4" (19mm) of steel at 500 yards. However, they may not have been using AP ammunition, and Tony's suit may not have been made of steel.

** Rephrasing for the sake of clarity: The OP was referring to the Mark I Iron Man suit, which was made in the oft-mentioned cave, with substandard parts - in other words, nothing that should stand up to the 50-cal.

*** Tony makes a cold-fusion reactor [[Memetic Mutation|WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS]]. Where exactly do you think he'd have problems refining/hardening the missiles' outer shell into something to make nigh-impenetrable armor out of?

*** They had somehow got their hands on the spare parts needed to make the Jericho missiles, and a missile going ''that'' fast needs a structure made with something ''strong'' to not break up or damage the internal components due to its own speed. Whatever it was it was stronger than steel rolled homogeneous armor, and that thickness was enough to survive non-AP .50 BMG rounds. AP or multi-purpose rounds would have probably teared through the armor, but the Ten Rings either didn't have them on hand or didn't think to use them.

** Someone has never fired an assault rifle in a combat situation before. They're aiming at an inch-wide, moving target in the dark while panicking and fleeing. That would be a hard target to hit if you were target shooting, let alone against a moving target that is fighting back, in close quarters, in the dark, while your body is shaking from adrenaline and terror. Plus, Tony could have filled the eye slits with ballistic glass - just like tanks in real life are fitted.

** There's also the fact that the Ten Rings seems to employ what appear to be lightly-trained soldiers who mostly seem to fire from the hips on full-auto - which, while deplorable, is actually commonplace enough. Asking these guys to hit a target as small as the eyeholes is probably too much.

** Alternately, they're ''too'' well-trained: Most modern soldiers are trained to shoot at the center-of-mass (ie. torso). In the middle of a high stress combat situation, the training would kick in.

** Who ever said Tony invented the Jericho missile? Did you see Stark Industries has a flipping army of engineers and Tony spends his days tinkering with his hot rods.

** Duress. He ''had'' to figure out how to make a miniaturized arc reactor or die. He didn't need to before, because he was already rolling in money and saw no need to engineer one until he realized he would need to build one to survive. He might not have even ''realized'' he could miniaturize the arc reactor until he found the need to do so, and Stane himself said that arc reactor tech was useless and not cost effective, so I'm not surprised Tony didn't follow up on it until he realized he needed to.

*** Peak power, anyway. Might not last long at that output.

** Maybe Tony could have made a smaller arc reactor years ago. But if he did, he would not have been able to work on other projects because minimizing would take up all his attention. Since he already had an arc reactor and his new projects were probably cooler, Tony didn't mention this so he could do what he wanted instead. It was only when he needed a smaller version that he used his previous knowledge.

** Stane says that they "haven't had a breakthrough in thirty years" regarding Arc Reactor technology. Tony is thirty-odd years old. Which means that the last breakthrough was during Howard Stark's time; in other words, the big reactor was invented by Tony's father. It wasn't until Tony was forced to miniaturize the technology while in captivity that he improved on his father's work.

** My idea was that Tony did little technical work for Stark Enterprises before his epyphany. He gallivanted around the world attracting the public eye, always flashy and handsome, presenting new weapons, partying like crazy and in general being an awesome PR person; he had great capacity for engineering and invention, but he preferred to use it on his hotrods than on his business. Then he found himself in danger, had to apply his technical skills to practical purposes, and achieved awesome results.

 

* "The Golmira atrocity?" "A modern-day descent into hell?" Seriously, they thought evacuating everyone from a small town and killing some of the men was going to shock everyone?

**** Nah, he was hitting them early enough in the process that it was still the core group. Note that the leader of the goons at the village was the same fat bearded guy that was sub-boss of the team that was holding Stark prisoner.

**** There is no proof he actually kills the soldiers. He gravity-guns some of them around, and yeah, he sure as hell breaks some bones, but this being Hollywood it doesn't necessarily follow that they all die; others he fires guided darts at, but they could easily be tranquilizers. The only one who ends up properly dead is the leader - we don't get to see his departure of this world either, but it's implicit.

*** I don't see people screeching and hollering when modern day terrorists use weapons that are clearly being made by Fabrique Nationale, Colt, Raytheon, etc. The reason is simple: the black market. They can acquire these weapons via theft and purchasing them via the black market. As far as the military and the media is concerned, it's entirely reasonable and possible that the Ten Rings might have acquired Stark Industries weapons via theft. Stane could have easily explained it away by saying that the weapons were stolen.

*** Yes, but remember, post-epiphany-Tony's new bottom line was "ACCOUNTABILITY!!!!". That was why Christine Everhart got up in his grill about Golmira in the first place. Tony came back to the States with this whole changed outlook about his weapons and the military-industrial-complex. He came back to try and dissolve the system and make a difference. Then, Christine goes and sees that the same shit is happening. Remember, Christine was the one who called Tony out for his war-profiteering from the beginning, so she was probably a little sweet on the idea that her pestering might have helped reform the "biggest mass-murderer in US history". When she found out about Golmira, her ego was bruised because, in her mind, she bought into Tony's BS. And Tony, who genuinely wanted to make a better world, was none-too-thrilled about finding that despite his efforts, not a damn thing had changed.

** Not to mention that all Stane does is fly his suit in a near-straight line, fire the cannons and missiles, and punch things. Plus, it looked like his suit was a self-contained cockpit, unlike Tony's suit, where the flight systems were directly controlled by his hands and feet. Stane just simply has to direct his suit to fly in a specific direction, and the computers would take care of it.

** I think the bigger difference is that Stark was wearing his suit, so he'd be perfectly used to complex maneuvers such as walking and picking things up, where Stane had to be cooped up in the torso steering conventionally. Also, wasn't the only maneuver that Stark had trouble with flying? He even learned to do that fairly quickly.

** Stane is The Dude. And The Dude abides.

** One would have to assume that the process was used to work out bugs in the computer and mechanical systems. Something that never really occurred with Stane's outfit, thus making the above mentioned concern valid.

** Okay now take that same logic and apply it to Rhodey stealing the MK II in the sequel. At least Stane's was custom built for him, and he had all the time he wanted to work the kinks out before trying to take on Iron Man. Rhodey just seemed to be able to jump in Tony's suit and fight in it with no more difficulty than if he had borrowed Tony's gym clothes for a round in the boxing ring. (speaking of which, have you ever borrowed clothes from somebody that wasn't quite your size, then tried to do something strenous like fighting? Yeah, imagine the pinching from a suit of [[Power Armor]].)

*** Tony and Rhodey were best buds. I can see him letting Rhodey take one of the older suits out for a spin if he'd asked for it. And they seem to be fairly intuitive anyway.

*** Note also that the suits seem to be self-adjusting and self-fitting when Stark is suiting up - the armor is very segmented and the panels and plates shift and lock in place while Stark is suiting up, which to me indicates that there's some kind of system in place that molds the armor's internal frame to match the wearer's body. Considering the tech already shown in Stark's basement, including a scanning device that already measures size, shape, and proportions (i.e. scanning the model of the Stark Expo) and the fact that Tony can wear different kinds of clothing underneath the same armor (i.e. tuxedos, tank-tops, bodygloves, etc) without the clothes being affected (hell, his tux doesn't even have any wrinkles on it!) it would be reasonable enough to conclude that Rhodes could walk in there and ask JARVIS to scan him and adjust the suit to fit his frame.

*** He would probably not need to [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000375/bio adjust] [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000332/bio it] to fit his frame. And he would know that, too.

***** Accounts vary on why Terrence Howard left to be replaced by Don Cheadle, but its generally held to be a combination of 'disagreement over salary' and 'was not easy to work with on set'.

*** And on the whole "best buds" thing, there's a line about how th suits have locks and such to prevent "unauthorized usage." Rhodey was clearly authorized to use the suit.

*** Think back to the first film, as well. Remember when Tony went to see Rhodey in the hangar to tell him about his new project, where Rhodey blew him off when he told him it wasn't a military project? The novelization explained that what Tony really wanted was for Rhodey to pilot the suit. He wanted somebody trustworthy to do it, and besides Pepper, Rhodey was pretty much the only person Tony fully trusted at that time. Rhodey was uninterested (though had he listened, he'd have probably jumped in based on the cool factor of the technology) so Tony piloted the suit himself. It's not unreasonable to assume that since Tony knew he was dying, he would have the forethought to believe the world still needed Iron Man. Being aware of what happened when his technology fell into the wrong hands before, he would only allow Rhodey to pilot his suits. Maybe it was Tony's drunkenness, but he didn't seem surprised at all to see Rhodey wearing the [[Mk II]], and as stated above, Black Widow noted that nobody can pilot Tony's suits without his permission. And even though the film never said it, I can't imagine Tony had no killswitch or something for the [[Mk II]] if he really didn't want Rhodey to have the suit. He probably didn't figure he'd take it to Justin Hammer for weaponization, but if he didn't want Rhodey to have the suit, he probably wouldn't have made it out of the house with it.

* Why ''did'' Stane try to have Tony killed in the first place? He was an absolute genius at weapons engineering and he didn't seem to display the slightest inclination to mess with the company's shadier dealings before the kidnapping.

** Seizing an opportunity as it came by? Given his apparent position among Tony's heirs, killing Tony Stark at home makes Stane an obvious suspect no matter how subtle he is. On the other hand, Tony getting blown up by terrorists in Afghanistan leaves him entirely clean. And Tony probably doesn't go to Afghanistan very often, so, take the shot while you have it.

** I guess Stane had a chip on his shoulder, and didn't like how Stark was pissing everyones good will down the drain with his womanising and stupid behaviour. Maybe he was offended that such talent should be wasted on someone so irresponsible.

*** Speaking of those magazine covers, one of them uses a headline referring to Tony taking the "reigns". This editor fairly sure the expression is "taking the reins" - either someone made a proofreading slip-up in their big-budget movie, it's a really bad pun, or all instances of this phrase the editor has read or heard in her entire life have actually been wrong.

*** This is subtly indicated in the scene where Stane is playing the piano: the piece he's playing is by Salieri, a less-talented contemporary of Mozart who is believed by some to have poisoned him out of jealousy. (This isn't actually true, but it's the perception that matters. Stane saw himself as overshadowed by Tony, just as Salieri was overshadowed by Mozart.)

** Also, Stane seems to like being evil just for the hell of it. I mean, his endgame ''plan'' was to ''murder a bunch of federal agents, then murder his boss, and kill a bunch of innocent civilians, in a way that he could not possibly cover up or attribute to anyone other than himself, while selling weapons to terrorists which have his company's name painted on them in big block letters leaving no doubt where they came from''. I think it's safe to say that Stane is the kind of evil who just doesn't care if his plans make sense, so long as they're ''evil''.

*** I got the impression that Stane's plan at that point was to kill Tony and snatch the Arc Reactor from him, and use that as a bargaining chip to convince the military to sweep the whole thing under the rug, if he'd keep them supplied with Arc Reactor-powered supersoldier suits. When the SHIELD agents showed up, he obviously wasn't expecting them to arrive, and moved to defend himself from them. He didn't expect Tony to intervene at that moment either, which is what led to the chaotic battle in the street.

 

** Yeah, it looks to me like Tony already has a drink problem. Tony's personality seems to be based largely on the [[Ultimate Marvel]] version, who at one point has the memorable line

{{quote|'''Black Widow''': Is it really necessary to knock back so many vodkas before you fly that thing?

** Perhaps he stopped behaving rationally when he knew for a fact that agents of SHIELD were coming to arrest him anyway?

** There's also that as far as Stane knows at the time, the 'lot of people' in question are Pepper, Agent Coulson and his squad, and nobody else. So, put on the suit, burn down the factory, kill Pepper and the SHIELD agents, then take the suit off once all the evidence is gone and blame everything on some runaway giant robot or psycho armored terrorist of unknown identity. Not bad for a villain improvising desperately on the spot. When it turns out that Tony Stark isn't actually dead after all, at this point Stane knows he's screwed. But by then we're already into the final fight scene, so, hey.

*** Earlier on we hear Pepper say "Obadiah's gone insane!" it may not be the most in depth judgment, but it's good enough.

*** Someone says that about every villain ever; it doesn't actually mean he's had a psychotic episode and developed mental illness.

** He saw the people looking through the area at the beginning. If they had a warrant, there were people in the police department who knew it was stark. His only sane choices would be to admit to everything and hope not to get punished too badly, or take a car and run. Using the suit would mean that he'd be punished worse if they detain him, there'd be more police (and national guard) there if he tries to run, and he could get killed while in the suit. The thing isn't invincible, after all.

** I also got another idea. Perhaps Stane was hoping that a sufficiently effective display of the Iron Monger suit might convince the government to ignore his indiscretions in favor of a steady supply of new power armors. You can bet that more than a few lawmakers and military personnel would take one look at that suit's abilities and consider sweeping Stane's crimes under the rug in exchange for the technology. The plan's batty, but then, so is Stane by that point.

*** Which is probably the only reason that this would work, seeing as the govenment officials wanted him for supplying weapons to the people they fight as well, a showing of the power he's willing to supply probably wouldn't get him any freedom. He'd have to be very batty to contemplate that. Though that would explain why he left that one guy alive at least. Very Very Batty.

** Stane thinks Stark is dead, and everyone else who can incriminate him is handily in his reach. All he has to do is kill the SHIELD agents and kill Pepper. When he's done that, remember that the only irreplaceable part of the Iron Monger suit is the reactor: he can just take it (to be given to his tech staff later) and spin up any excuse story to the authorities, perhaps even self-destruct the Iron Monger, and only be delayed a few months in his plans.

 

** It's possible- indeed probable- that they already had all the components requiring machine precision already assembled or salvaged and only needed the blueprints and assembly between them. They weren't exactly having him work with circuits. For that matter, this troper has entered a hardware company's board lab, where they can perform some modifications upon motherboards and other computer parts by hand, albeit in an environment of extreme cleanliness and with great care.

*** When they tell Stark that he has to assemble the weapon he points out what he will need and also requests two sets of precision tools. It is a line in the version of the movie I have on dvd.

** Also, keep in mind that he doesn't actually build the missile. Whether he was actually able to in the first case is kind of a moot point.

*** That's exactly what happens in the scene where Raza (the bald leader of particular Ten Rings cell) demands to know what's going on, then tells Stark he has one more day to finish building the missile.

*** [[Idiot Ball]], sort of. Raza was smart enough to suspect something was up, but he probably assumed that Stark was just making random crap to stall for time. No idea why he thought imposing a time limit would suddenly change Stark's mind, however. Maybe "You have one day" was meant more as "I'd better see some tangible progress by tomorrow" and not "I'd better see a finished missile by tomorrow".

**** Yea, see, if This Troper saw someone working every day on a project (seeming to work at least) and then came in and found them with a mechanical knee thing the assumption would be "This jerkass is screwing around rather than making my missile" instead of the much less Occam friendly "This jerkass is building a robotic suit powered by his pacemaker with which to escape from my cave after defeating my entire garrison."

** Maybe for the ordinary plebes of electrical engineering, it is impossible, but this is ''Tony Stark''. Stane himself pretty much points out just how outclassed everyone else is when he screams how Tony Stark is able to build technology in a cave with a box of scraps that a fully-equipped engineering team in a state-of-the-art laboratory cannot duplicate because ''the science does not yet exist to pull it off.'' That is how far beyond everyone else Tony Stark is when it comes to engineering.

*** Heck, near-impossible engineering ''is'' Tony Stark's superpower. Spiderman has spider powers, Wolverine regenerates from anything, HULK SMASH, and Tony Stark ''literally'' builds the impossible.

***** Basically, yes.

** For crying out loud the guy was able build something akin to a nuclear reactor the size of a fist.

** In The Ultimates, which Iron Man is largely based off, Tony is so freakishly intelligent because due to a freak of genetics, he has neural tissue throughout his entire body, in a layer underneath his skin, not just in his brain. Humans may only use 10% of their brain, but when your brain is fifteen times the size of the next guy's thats a lot of extra brainpower. It's also mentioned that this causes Stark continual, burning pain as nurons are firing onto nerves through his body. He's a big drinker because Alcohol numbs the skin and therefore removes the pain.

*** I'm gonna be pedantic 'cause I really though TV Tropes would be above the myth: The brain uses ALL of its capacity, but MOST of it is NOT directed into the cognitive processes. They're the parts that constitute instinctual knowledge, emotions, memory, coordination, and a fuckton of other things that we wouldn't notice.

**** Ahem. [[90% of Your Brain]].

** Much more portable than previous weapons with the same kill power. Actualy, this troper is of the opinion (based upon the overpressure wave and the way the submunitions fly) that the device is a system to deliver very adavanced thermobaric explosives with pinpoint accuracy by the dozens. That seems like the sort of thing the military might want.

** It nearly leveled a mountain and was able to be fired from a really pretty small launcher, allowing use in the field instead of having to call in a B-52. The repulsor technology was, presumably, the rocket driving the missile itself (repulsors are what the suit uses to fly, after all).

*** That was the idea I got- because the propulsion systems in the mini-missiles take up so little space, they can carry ''very'' big payloads for their size.

** I was under the impression that it was a terror weapon, and was mostly supposed to scare the enemy. As for the precision weapons, maybe he didn't like the idea of putting all your eggs in one basket, and decided to make weapons that would be effective for fighting a first-world country.

*** I don't think very many cluster bombs have ''individually guided submunitions'' like the Jericho.

**** Actually, there IS [[wikipedia:CBU-97|one bomb]] currently in active use that utilises individually guided submunitions. It is essentially a single bomb that can decimate an entire armoured column.

** I'd chalk it up to the [[Rule of Funny]]

*** Also, listen closely the first time he tries to introduce himself. I don't remember the whole name, but it starts with "Strategic Defense...". In other words, the acronym wouldn't have been "S.H.I.E.L.D." yet

**** But it is possible to pick it up the first time; at least, I did. The first one starts with 'Strategic Homeland...' something or other, prompting me to dwell on how annoyingly topical they were being - when I realized what it must be for.

***** This troper owns the movie (On Blu Ray, naturally), and worked it out to be 'Strategic Homeland Intelligence, Enforcement, and Logistics Division.' Still an in-joke, but of course close to what the original acronym of S.H.I.E.L.D. And of course this entire thing is more really one part [[Continuity Nod]] and one part [[Sequel Hook]].

** Because that's the most clean way to go: Nobody saw Tony's arc reactor, but he (and Pepper) So, he hoped him to die from a heart attack, and police finding him dead. The authopsy would leave more questions about how could he had lived for months, than what killed him. Also. Even if he had a backup on his table (which he had) he would be too weak to get it. Stane's plan would have been perfect, if it wasn't for that meddlesome mr. nice robot arm.

** Stane is a businessman, not an assassin. It's for the same reason he got Ten Rings to do the dirty deed, he's undoubtedly as hesitant to kill people personally as anyone else would be. If he used a gun for example it could well be tracked back to him. Once he got his suit that seems to go out the window, but then he was getting rather desperate there.

**** Maybe he truly cares for him as a friend.

***** I wonder what makes him more caring - ordering a hit to kill him, or leaving him without his only means of survival?

** It is a pace-maker - remember when Pepper helped Tony put in the new one? Tony explicitly says that he's being into cardiac arrest. Thus, no generator = bye bye Tony.

 

** Congratulations, you know more about the subject than the writers. Alternatively, [[Rule of Cool]].

** The comic version was also a pacemaker, which this one may be too as he did go in to cardiac arrest after the first magnet was removed.

*** Don't you mean out of SCRAPS! ...sorry.

** His reactor ''wasn't'' destroyed in the fight. It flickered back to life as he lay collapsed- a sign that he took the reactor to its absolute limit, and had he took any more punishment he would have died.

*** Inidividual jetpacks in real life are made unfeasible solely by the upper limit for portable energy carried by the pack being at most 15 minutes worth of flight. A pacemaker runs on a tiny lithium battery for ages. One could easily assume that 0.01% of power that was able to fling a remarkably heavy suit of armor like a bumblebee all over the sky for hours on end would be enough to power the pacemaker for years.

 

*** Oxygen doesn't burn, I'm pretty sure an oxy-acetylene torch is just a hotter acetylene torch, since it has its own oxidant built-in. [Instead of relying on lower concentrations of atmospheric oxygen]

*** What chemistry class did you fail? Oxygen is one of the most flamable substances in existence. Fire cannot exist without it. ''Elemental'' Oxygen not burning I'll take, since it would be rather hard for it to release the energy of it's bonds when it isn't bonded, but ''Molecular'' Oxygen, which is what it almost invariably is (hence why it's nicknamed O2), has bonds, and rather energetic ones at that, to break.

***** 1) Hi, I'd like you to meet my friend fission. 2) Oxygen will burn by itself, until it is (quickly) consumed. It doesn't need to react with ANY substance, which is a silly thing to say.

****** Ok, to clear up. Oxygen will not burn, the air is about 21% oxygen and has yet to burn up around us. Energy is released with the forming of bonds with oxygen, hence why burning fossil fuels produces CO2, arranged like O-C-O. It is correctly called oxidisation. Finally, oxygen is not a fissile material, splitting it takes in energy, and nuclear fission (and fusion) are nothing to do with burning anyway. In conclusion, OXYGEN NEVER BURNS, burning is when a substance reacts with oxygen to produce heat and light. Oxygen does make an acetylene torch hotter because it allows the acetylene to burn faster. OK? Now drop it!

*** Nope. Oxygen isn't, itself, flammable. Concentrated oxygen ''helps'' things burn, certainly, but if you light a match in a room that's 100% oxygen, all you're going to get is...a lit match. Oxygen is ''not fuel''.

**** A lit match that burns REALLY QUICKLY because there is more oxygen than usual to take part in the reaction. Hence Apollo I. The oxygen DID NOT BURN. The plastics and textiles involved in the electronics and finishes of the capsule burned. They burned at four times the speed and intensity that anybody was expecting, since the oxygen concentration was four times normal. This is the same effect exploited in an oxy-acetylene torch. Can you open just the acetylene valve and light the torch? Yes, but with only atmospheric oxygen to work with, the flame will be weak. Can you open just the oxygen valve and light the torch? Nope. Put em both together, though, and the pure oxygen reacts quickly with the pure acetylene, resulting in an intense fire.

**** As well, he would probably be testing the control systems and such when having to compensate for the natural movement of a person so they don't accidentally break his ankles when he twitches his leg while maintaining any given flight speed, attitude or what have you. Since he doesn't really have any point of reference, he has to test it on himself.

*** Yeah, so mechanical power is actually newton-meters per second, not newtons per kilogram. Additionally, newtons per kilogram is not a measurement of force but, as the units suggest, a measurement of force per kilogram.

* The miniaturized Arc reactors are capable of providing, approximately, a stupid amount of energy. And yet, they use little wires and plastic connectors, which would undoubtedly melt in a split second if asked to deliver eleventy billion joules or whatever. Why not just remove the silly wires altogether? Having the reactors spring to life as they're rotated in the holes would have also been way cooler.

** [[Ace Of Scarabs|This troper]] would like to point out that cables leading out from a power source do NOT have to pull every last erg of power. Just pull whatever energy you need at the moment. Presumably the suit has additional contacts inside its connectors that attach the Reactor to the internals.

** Not to mention, it's harder to aim than fire wildly. If he had tried to aim at soldiers who are TRAINED to kill him, he'd have lost, especially since the odds were stacked, by firing wildly he scared them off without a confrontation.

** If Dr Yinsen had anything to do with the bomb at the door, that blew away those two mooks, then he probably wasn't thinking too much about the sanctity of life.

*** Indeed, after the mine goes off, Yinsen emerges from cover to regard the bodies and says "oh my goodness", sounding a bit sick to his stomach. It's possible he was repressing his trained urge to run over and check them for vital signs. He shakes it off quickly enough, but asking him to then start shooting people is a bit much.

** [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|Dammit, he's a doctor, not a commando.]]

* I know having a large glowing light in your chest looks very cool, but surely both Stane and Stark would think not to expose their one and sole source of energy out in the open like that? One would think that if a single stray shot that hit the arc-generator would destroy it and render the suit useless, they would put some double armor on that spot rather than putting a weak lightbulb in there instead. It's especially annoying with Stane who seems to literally shove the reactor into the very front chest plate of his armor.

** Stane's suit was a prototype designed to prove the concept, not a battle-ready model. Full tactical readiness wouldn't necessarily be paramount. As for Stark's suit, if the game of the film is cannon, the arc reactor needs to be exposed so Stark can use the Uni-beam. But just in case it isn't, some alternate theories: 1) To make removal, repair, and replacement easier. Stark's arc reactor is literally ''keeping him alive''. If it starts having problems he doesn't want to be fumbling around with twelve layers of armor, he'll want to be able to pop it out quickly, fix it if he can, and plug in a spare if he can't (and I would definitely trust Tony Stark to have at least one spare arc reactor on hand somewhere). Also, the arc reactor puts out a huge amount of energy. What if it malfunctions and seems likely to '''explode'''? If you were Stark, wouldn't you want to be able to get that thing out of your chest as soon as possible? 2) There's no reason to believe a single stray shot ''would'' destroy the thing. The film doesn't say how much punishment the arc reactor itself can take, and even if it is fairly fragile there's no reason to assume that Stark hadn't installed some sort of protective force field somethingorother (or just a thick screen of bullet-proof glass) to protect it from stray shots.

*** Uh. Stark didn't make backups. There was that one scene in the film, you know. The one where he was having cardac arrest!? (Apart from that I agree)

*** True, but that doesn't mean he couldn't plan ahead for when he ''would'' have backups ready.

**** I think this is underemphasized. Note how when Obadiah wants to crush Tony with the SUV, and Tony wants to hit him with the chest repulsor, he has to divert all his energy just to fire it. Tony's suit is essentially running on fumes, and he can't do any of his fancy tricks or he'll, you know, ''die''. If it had been powered by the advanced reactor, with full power to the repulsors, one can easily assume that Tony would have mopped the floor with Iron Monger.

*** Stane's not really the type to bluff. He's a ruthless businessman on the surface and much worse than that below it, you don't get to where he's gotten in life without being damned confident that whatever you've got will trump your rivals.

*** Also, what with the reasons in the OP and the "icing problem", the film emphasizes that Stane is wrong. We actually have no reason to take him at face value; it's a classic villain boast, and everyone who posts here is Genre Savvy enough to know what happens when you say things like, "muahaha! There's no way you can stop me now!" etc.

** It's also a demonstration of the differences in their personalities and styles: starting from the same point (the Mk1 armor), they both improved it; Tony's answer was to make it slimmer and more maneuverable, Obadiah's answer was to make it thicker and more heavily armed. Each man thought their way was the "right" way, so Stane looks at Stark's little red <s>Corvette</s> suit and sees only that Tony hasn't kept up with his advancements.

** It is implied that Tony's suit loses much of its protective powers when it's unpowered (see for instance how he can survive a tank shell to the face without a scratch when the suit's running, but suffers obvious blunt trauma from a simple three-story fall after he kills its power). When Obadiah takes the helmet, it's obviously unpowered because it's removed from the suit, and thus much more vulnerable to damage.

 

** [[You Fail Biology Forever|Because the heart isn't located dead center in the chest where the metal cylinder housing the reactor is located.]]

*** Er, yes it is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulatory_system More of it is on the left than the right, yes, but a hole dead-center of your chest would be...problematic.

* The U.S. military's research budget is something over 200 billion a year, which tops the rest of the world combined. Stark Industries appears to have a large chunk of that, building missiles, small arms and what looks like the movies version of the Abrams tank and humvees. Stane is probably making a few tens of million tops selling weapons to terrorist groups (probably less, as it seems he just gave the 10 rings weapons). If it ever comes out that he's giving/selling these weapons to terrorists, Stark Industries is going to get shut down by the feds and Stane is going to Federal 'Pound me in the ass' Prison for Treason. Why the hell is someone depicted as a savvy businessman risking so much legitimate business for a few million?

** Most of the money made is probably going either right back into Stark Industries or to Tony Stark, being the owner of the company. Stane might be a high-rolling CEO, but even he would likely have a limit on his salary. Making tens of millions selling weapons probably rolls back into his own personal pockets.

*** Unless... Stane was after an even bigger prize... Perhaps a ''ring''?

*** ''Captain America: The Winter Soldier'' offers another possible hypothesis in hindsight. Who else do we know has an M.O. of operating through ostensibly respectable persons in high-ranking responsible positions, and deliberately encouraging global terrorism and chaos not for profit but to encourage a general climate of fear that will encourage people to vote for more draconian measures of state control, which their proxies in the military-industrial complex can then use to consolidate power? {{spoiler|Hail Hydra}}.

* I am bugged by Tony's treatment of the miniature arc reactor. After he's done with the first one he just tells Pepper to throw it away? That technology could revolutionize the world and save millions of lives just running water purification devices alone.

** [[Captain Obvious|Or it could be harnessed to power weapons systems.]] Tony's made it expressly clear, over and over and over and ''over'' and '''''over''''' again, across both movies, that ''Arc Reactor tech stays under his control'' because once it gets out, it is the catalyst for the next generation of weapons. If he starts using it for widespread civilian applications, its only going to be a matter of time (probably a matter of ''minutes'') before it ends up in military hands, and then the cat's out of the bag. As Tony himself says to Rhodes, "this one stays with me."

** This still falls under the same problem as most tinker superheroes. The root problem of most problems in the world is lack of energy. This arc reactor would solve water problems, manufacturing problems and several food problems. Transports designed around them would solve personal vehicle issues and logistical issues in food deliveries around the world. This would also give you completely cheap space travel, opening a massive number of new fields of business. Terrorists fail in a world where they can't recruit, and its a lot harder to recruit where people are happy, well fed, well entertained, and have new frontiers to explore. Issues and terrorists would still exist, as there will always be unhappy people. But keeping this tech under wraps because "it can make weapons" is still the most ridiculous and contrived reason I've seen in cinema.

*** Not at all. Stark is holding onto his tech and keeping it to himself because ''that is entirely in-character for him.'' Stark has A) an egomanic complex and B) has been personally shown that his tech has been perverted by the enemies of his country to be turned against the very people he wants to protect, in a brutal display of force that mentally damaged him at a very fundamental level. He knows that this is due to a lack of security surrounding his tech. Ergo, he wants to keep his tech from being used for the wrong ends, but he knows that if his tech gets out, it ''will'' be used for ends he does not want. The only way to protect his technology, in his eyes, is to keep it to himself and refuse to let anyone else have it. Its not the most completely rational choice, but Tony Stark isn't a rational person. If you think this is contrived, then you're not understanding the character of Tony Stark and how his own ego and mental complexes effect his approach to his technology. Its his tech, and Tony believes he is the only person who can correctly use his technology. There's a ''reason'' why Rhodes has to beat some sense into Tony in the sequel and demonstrate to him that ''he is misusing his technology'' - and therefore proving to Tony that he is not the proper arbitrator of who can and cannot use that technology - before Tony will let him take the War Machine suit.

** Rocket boots: Plates covering the thrusters when not in flight so thy aren't damaged and weight is properly distributed. Ice: Why ''wouldn't'' it have a "deploy flaps" lever? Why are you assuming that Stane's engineers are retarded when it comes to basic safety features?

*** Tony's suit, which was much lighter and more maneuverable , barely got back to normal in time (literally; he missed the road by ''centimetres''!). Even if he could break the ice like Tony did, there is no way the Iron Monger could get back into flying mode like Iron Man did. Look at the take-off speed of Iron Monger and tell me it could do anything in free-fall.

** Alternative interpretations: a) Stane doesn't have flaps and indeed drops like a stone, but Iron Monger is tough enough that it sustains no damage from the impact. b) He gets his power back before he hits the ground, points Iron Monger's feet down and just fires those humongous thrusters for all they're worth, which stops the fall.

***** From a filmmaking perspective, it's a [[Hope Spot]]. Tony pulls out the [[Chekhov's Gun]], seemingly defeats Stane, and triumphantly floats in the air before running out of power and wobbling to earth. He starts to ditch the suit, then *gasp* Stane reappears good as new! It serves to up the tension by weakening Iron Man while also making him appear momentarily victorious.

** Also, keep in mind Stark would want the Ten Rings knowing as little as possible about what he's doing. Asking them to acquire palladium would be giving them an additional detail as to what he's doing, as opposed to them seeing him taking one small component out of a missile to make something.

 

** As for the first one...yeah, that's just comic book physics for you. As to the second one, he ''is'' wearing state of the art armor far better than anything else developed. Presumably it's got some killer shock absorbers.

** There's a reason why we have [[Made of Iron]] as a trope. We can probably pass off Tony surviving such abuse while wearing his suits as a combination of this and Stark's ridiculous engineering capability. Any man-sized suit like the one Tony has ''must'' have good tech to compensate for sudden accelerations and decelerations, and those can translate into shock absorbers.

** I simply got the feeling that the tank had Tony flying straight at it, so didn't have to compensate. They just put the suit at the centre of the reticle and let the shell go.

* At the end of Stark's first flight, he hovers less than a meter above the roof of his home and kills the power. His suit falls through the roof, the floor below with the piano, and then smashes the car below that to actually stop. Because he was hovering, he had next to no momentum, so the force that made his suit fall through came almost entirely from the weight of his suit. I don't know the maths or physics (not that they apply, but even so), but wouldn't the suit have to be many, many tonnes to do that? and if so, how can he walk around in it without at least causing serious cracks in whatever he's walking over?

*** A bit of research seems to indicate that the piece is the second movement (Larghetto) from Salieri's Concerto for piano and orchestra in C major.

* Why did Tony tell Rhodes to keep the skies clear when going after Stane? He could have just said, "Just make sure they don't shoot ''me''."

** How are they going to differentiate the two? The Air Force is more likely to shoot down both of them.

*** Uh... maybe they can target the one that is three times the size of the other?

* Remember the beginning of the first movie, when the electromagnet in Tony's chest is run with a car battery? Why can't he start running it off a battery again when he gets radiation poisoning from the ARC reactor?

** Because batteries are a)bulky, and b)not as versatile or adjustable as the AR.

** They were sent to rescue him, but they couldn't be completely sure he was him, or he hadn't been compromised in some fashion. It's standard procedure in situations where a SWAT team is sent into a building to capture and cuff ''everyone'', for example, and sort them out later.

** If you look closely, they have their weapons shouldered, in move-to-engage position, but for the most part their weapons are not directly pointed at Tony. They're keeping an eye on the surroundings in case someone is pursuing him so they can quickly snap-to-target and open fire. Its a case of [[Shown Their Work]]; the director really did his research on military operations.

** Not really. Tony is not the kind of character who dwells on these kinds of things, or at the very least, tries not to dwell on bad experiences when he can ''do'' something about it. Look at how he dealt with months of captivity by terrorists and the death of the doctor who saved him: he didn't dwell on it, he just hurled himself headlong into new work almost immediately after he got back. He didn't talk with anyone about it, even barely saying anything about what happened when he was at the press conference. Similarly, with Stane, he doesn't dwell on the betrayal, and instead hurls himself into another line of important work: enforcing peace around the world and progressing technology with his Expo. He refuses to mention any of it, instead focusing on his work to get past it. That's a consistent aspect of how his character handles things.

** Well, what do you expect him to do? The unidentified contact ''just saved your wingman's life'', at the risk of its own, and spent the entire engagement trying to avoid combat. Its pretty damned obvious that whatever the contact was, it wasn't hostile, especially after is saved the life of one of the pilots who had been shooting at it. Pursuing the contact even after it has demonstrated obviously friendly intent would be idiotic.

 

== Iron Man 2 ==

** Suit with a glowing thing where the Arc reactor would normally be, for show. Simple. He ''is'' putting on a media show, after all.

** The Arc Reactor also isn't visible on the Mark III suit: the torso understructure goes down first, then a larger chest section with the uni-beam, and then the chest armor. The arc reactor is buried behind an inch or two of equipment. This is probably true for the Mark IV, if that's what Tony's using in that scene. For short-term like how Tony used it, he might have had it running on backup batteries or able to draw power without the full link-up. The Mark V suit draws power without needing the arc reactor exposed too, so it might be an upgrade in his tech.

* In the trailer, Tony is about to go the expo by jumping out of the plane. Pepper throws his helmet out, so that Tony apperently has to jump out, grab the falling helmet (using boot thrusters to catch up with it), then put it on before landing. What if he missed grabbing it? Even if she knew Tony could control the suit without the helmet to land safely, she still through out an expensive piece of technology which may contain proprietary Start technology, AND which could have seriously injured someone on the ground if the helmet hit them.

** She seems perfectly confident that Tony would be able to catch the helmet without any trouble. After all, this is a guy who flies a supersonic suit of powered armor to a ''media event''. Spotting an catching a falling object the size of a beachball when he can stop on a dime in midair and punch out the control lever on an ejection seat shouldn't be too hard.

** Which begs a whole new question: why does ''Iron Man'' need a ''plane?''

*** Because he likes to sit down while traveling places?

*** [[Fridge Brilliance]]: Although Jarvis doesn't articulate it until later, it's possible Tony already suspected that using the suit was speeding up the palladium poisoning. He didn't want to fly it all the way from Malibu to New York when he has a perfectly good plane to use.

** Does it bother anybody else that this scene which is awesome, touching and fun doesn't actually happen in the movie?

* In the second flim, how was Ivan so sure that Tony would be at the race? He didn't decide to drive until the last minute. I guess you could say that even if Tony wasn't driving he would likely be there anyway but it seems somewhat coincedental. Did I miss something here?

** You did, though it was easy too: it's briefly - ''very'' briefly - mentioned Tony owns the racing team (''What's the point of owning a racing team if you don't get to drive once in a while'', if my memory isn't playing up). Attacking the place was likely to draw Tony out.

** Uh, it's hypberbole designed to illustrate Tony's ego. While he's certainly effective at what he does, one of the film's reccurring elements is Tony's inflated sense of self-worth getting in the way of logic.

** Not to mention that with the suit's ability to show up at the doorstep of a world leader, Iron Man can basically be a cruise missile for hunting down anyone dumb enough to start a war on his watch. Traditionally, you deter somebody from starting a war by having the force available to destroy his army. Tony Stark cuts out the middleman; he has the force available to destroy ''you, personally'', enough to keep any tinpot dictator in line.

*** You do know it's possible for things to malfunction in ways that they aren't meant to do, right?

*** Yes, I know. I'm probably thinking too hard about this.

*** You guys do realize that you're talking about a country led by a man who once ''kidnapped a South Korean film director and forced him to make a Godzilla rip-off under threat of death'', right?

* Why does Tony Stark even bother with a heart? In the first movie, he had to create the arc reactor to keep a piece of sharpnel in it's place and prevent it from lodging deeper into his heart. Later presumably he kept the arc reactor around for the sake of convenience, because it both worked perfectly fine and was also capable of powering his Iron Man suit. However given the Palladium poisoning issue and the fact that all of his Iron Man suits are now powered by their own arc reactors as evidenced my Mr.War Machine well...stealing one, why doesn't the world's smartest man(capable of creating the Iron Man prototype in a cave with a box of scraps as well as a home-made particle accelerator) with literally infinite resources solve the issue by designing/buying the world's most advanced artificial heart and undergoing an operation?

*** No, you ''do'' need a lot of power to run the electromagnet, as evidenced by the fact that ''they had to hook up a goddamn car battery to his chest'' to power the damn thing. If they ''could'' have used smaller batteries to power Stark's electromagnet, they ''would'' have. Unless Tony wants to spend the rest of his life lugging around a gigantic battery everywhere, he needs a powerful but miniaturized power supply - ergo, the Arc Reactor. The only reason he even ''built'' the reactor was to be mobile in the first place while still having a power source strong enough to power the magnet. And Tony ''is'' the kind of guy who would rather die than be handicapped into lugging a car battery everywhere he goes.

**** there are still about 50 flaws with that line of reasoning. The main one is that electricity travels through conductors; it doesn't need to be in his chest. Then of course there's that using the suit makes it worse, but again, he can just put another in the suit since IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE INSIDE HIM. This opens up a whole other can of worms in that his other suits had their own built-in reactors, so he both knew it could be done and had to want someone without an arc reactor in their chest (e.g., not him) to use them. What an [[Idiot Ball]] he was carrying that whole movie...

*** No, its not an oversight, its a ''personality defect.'' Tony Stark is a massive pile of pride and contrariness. Yes, ''rationally'', Stark ''could'' potentially use something else to power the electromagnet, but he ''won't'' because ''Tony Stark'' is not the sort to publically and personally handicap himself like that. He ''would'' rather die than lug a car battery around for the rest of his life. That's just the kind of person he is.

**** He wouldn't have to lug a car battery around. He could have an arc reactor strapped to his upper arm, contained in an airtight case with unnoticable wires running into the magnet in his chest. There is '''no''' reason for the reactor to be stored inside his body if doing so is threatening his life, except that the script needed the reactor to be killing him so they could fill an hour of dead time.

*** Wearing it outside his body makes it easy to steal, as noted below. If it's in his chest, it is difficult to remove without specialized tools like the one Stane had. If it's on his arm, any jerk can beat him over the head, cut it loose, and be gone in moments. Tony Stark is too paranoid about his technology to do something like that; this is a consistent part of his character.

** In the comics, Tony eventually heals up enough that he can survive an operation to take out the shrapnel, so he has the arc reactor removed as well. But in the second movie, he has more pressing concerns, what with the thing keeping him alive being toxic to his body. This didn't just happen; it's been getting progressively worse by the start of the movie. Perhaps he'll be rid of the arc reactor by Iron Man 3. (Heck, they could even use this as an excuse to introduce Extremis to the movie continuity.)

*** My memory of the comic book is that even there, Tony didn't ''choose'' surgery. He collapsed in public and so was rushed to hospital for surgery while unconscious.

** The idea behind a mechanical heart taking over for his weak fleshy heart is just no good. No machine ever developed has the capability to take over for the human heart for very long. I mean we are talking about a machine that will need to beat nonstop for years on end with no realistic way of preforming maintenance Tony knows better than to even try. And as for undergoing surgery to remove the shrapnel He probably can't find any doctors willing to preform such a risky surgery. They would have to root around 3 of the most important organs in the human body to find tiny slivers of metal and Tony probably didn't tell anybody about the Palladium poisoning so they have no reason to do such a surgery because Tony isn't in any danger from the slivers.

*** Note earlier in the scene, how he doesn't remove his clothing. It just vaporizes off his powered up harness. It would not surprise if the electrical charge didn't just augment his strength and whips, but also provides protection.

**** The armour provides that according to one of the tie-in comics.

** Vanko can speak English well enough; he was just screwing with Hammer. Hammer either figured it out and refused to indulge him, didn't want anyone else (a translator) in on his secret, or just didn't care.

** Also, Hammer offered to get a translator during their first meeting. After that went (apparently) so swimmingly, he probably just figured, "ah, what the hell, we can communicate; what do I need to drag a translator around for?"

* Why doesn't someone just shoot Vanko when he's rampaging on the Monacco racetrack? Lethal force is clearly justified, Vanko isn't wearing any armor, and surely there must be some sort of armed security force at such a high profile event.

** What, were you expecting [[Instant Emergency Response]]? A SWAT team ''did'' arrive at the end of the fight, but from the start of the battle to the ending lasted a total of maybe five minutes. Getting a SWAT team on-site, through a crowd, when the only accessible roads are packed with either burning debris or screaming race cars, inside of ''five minutes,'' is ''really, '''really''' damn'' fast.

*** Its also worth pointing out that the Monaco racing event was not taking place inside a closed location. Its taking place in the actual streets of Monaco, across the entire city. Security response is going to be slowed down quite a bit; they can't deploy instantly to every location inside the city.

** Actually, if all it were doing was dumping common Palladium 107 into his system, it wouldn't be toxic to him. Likely, it was dumping small quantities of a radioactive Palladium isotope (remember the neutron damage; that would change the isotope) into his bloodstream. A chelating agent would help very little; he's still suffering radiation poisoning.

* Speaking of radiation poisoning, how come Tony and Pepper weren't suffering from cancer after the massive exposure that must have resulted from being in the vicinity of the arc reactor explosion at the end of the first film?

* How exactly does Rhodes get in and out of the Mark II suit? The film elegantly shows him either wearing it or out of it, but if Tony needs complex robotics to get in and out, how did Rhodes get into one already assembled in a showcase, and then back out of it in an airplane hanger?

** For the showcase, it would be as simple as Rhodes walking down there and telling JARVIS to fire up the assembly. As for the aircraft hanger, I'm fairly certain that Tony would have designed (or redesigned) the later armor suits to be easily removed if he needed to get out of it. It is entirely conceivable that the United States Air Force could ''possibly'' have the resources to put together a similar machine in order to re-armor War Machine too. I mean, [[Sarcasm Mode|its not like they're a branch of the most well-funded military on the planet or anything]].

*** That's not the issue. The issue is that the Mk II Armour would have had to have been refitted to hold the Arc Reactor within the chestplate rather than run it from the reactor already in the user's (In this case Tony's) chest. Why would Tony ''ever'' make a modifcation that would allow literally anyone to use one of his outdated pieces of tech when in almost every other instance before that, he's kept every single piece of his own tech and any knowledge thereof very close to his chest ([[Incredibly Lame Pun|literally]])? The problem is less with Rhodey being able to use the suit, but why the suit was modified for his use in the first place.

**** '''Because Stark was going to ''give Rhodes the suit''.''' You remember the part where Fury ''explicitly says'' that Tony could have stopped Rhodes from taking the suit if he wanted to, and the whole thing Stark has going through in the movie regarding continuing his legacy and passing on what he has to his friends? He ''wants'' Rhodes to have the suit, so naturally he's going to engineer the suit to carry the thing that's going to power it. I'm not sure how you missed this ''very important detail'', considering that it is stated in the movie, is a central theme of the movie, and was discussed over and over and ''over'' on this page.

*** Also, as was pointed out above, we can clearly see the tools being used to fit Rhodes with the suit. Also note that the suit is heavily segmented with adjustable plating and fittings; I wouldn't put it past Tony to have programmed the assembly machines to automatically adjust the fitting for dismensions. Rhodes fires up the assembly gear, it scans his body and adjusts the suit to fit his frame, and presto. War Machine.

* Why is it that during the final fight with the Hammeroids, Rhodes and Stark argue over who gets the high ground? Normally that would seem reasonable... but they can fly. Staying in the killbox to fight seems very stupid when you are fully capable of flying up ten feet.

** It also decreases accuracy (repulsors are flight stabilizers, remember?) and increases likely collateral damage. The robots can ''also'' fly, and it's easier to shoot/punch them on the ground than in the air.

* Why is it that, when fighting Vanko in the final showdown, Tony and Rhodes attempt to punch him out? Vanko's only weapon seems to be his whips, which are clearly better in melee range than either of the heroes fists... so why didn't our heroes just use their guns? They shot him a bit, but flying and strafing would seem a lot more reasonable, though I suppose it's rule of cool in effect.

** Tony tried to take off, and Vanko just pulled him back down. They try to get out of range, Vanko pulls them back in again. They try and shoot him, it bounces off. If Tony had tried his wrap-up trick again, Vanko would've had a counter to it.

*** No. Watch the fight scene again - at the very beginning, Tony lifts off and tries to fly overhead. Vanko grabs him and drags him down. He then shifts to Rhodes, and Tony is forced to jet-tackle him to get him off Rhodes. After Vanko throws him off again and hits Rhodes again, Tony has to start physically beating him with his fists to draw his attention away. Then they both get tangled up again. In other words, Tony couldn't take to the air after the first attempt - doing do would leave Rhodes open to attack and probably get him seriously injured or killed. Rhodes probably didn't try to fly because he wasn't all that well-versed in airborne combat while operating the multiple cannons on his suit. He's not as experienced at using the suit, so he stuck with what he knew.

**** "Fast paced brawl"-this adds a whole new level of brilliance to the scene in which the Ex-Wife does what it does. Note that Vanko makes no effort to dodge at all-he just stands there grinning as it goes through its agonizingly long fire up sequence. Why? Because he recognized the weapon as being Hammer-tech (he should...if he had time to install a remote override complete with combat controls, he had time to learn what weapons the suit carries), so knew that there was nothing to fear: it wouldn't work.

*** Even more brilliantly? Maybe while he was busy hacking/controlling the War Machine suit, he ''disabled'' the Ex-Wife.

* As an aside to all that, why would Vanko build his own robot and not put in any guns, at all?

** Aside from the fact that Vanko is insane, he's also irrational, insane, angry, insane, wants to hurt Tony Stark in a terribly personal way that is most likely aided by being able to do it with a melee weapon, plus he's insane, and if he wanted to just blow Stark up, he probably would have easily been able to blow him up or shoot him - but its personal and he wants it to be up close and personal. Also, a minor thing, but ''Vanko is insane.''

*** Bah. Insanity is a ''perfect'' explanation for irrational behavior.

**** Maybe when it's valid, but people throw it around for everything a villain ever does. Why didn't Vanko put guns in it? Because guns are tested and proven to be worthless against Iron Man. The whips, on the other hand, did serious damage to the Silver Centurion armor. For tearing up the Iron Man armor and its pilot, the whips are clearly superior weapons to trying to arm it with conventional firepower. That is a reason. Insanity is not.

**** Vanko loves the whips, and anything that's added to the suit will take away from the whips in one way or another.

* It was the height of the Cold War when the Howard Stark and the elder Mr. Vanko were working on the ARC reactor. Why in the world would the U.S. ever redeport a defector from the Soviet Union because he had Capitalist profit motives?

** Because, as JARVIS says very clearly, and as the newspapers show very promienently in large, bold letters, Vanko was accused of ''spying.'' Howard Stark simply eliminated someone who was competition.

** My interpretation was that, after Stark realized Vanko had selfish motivations, he framed him for something that would get him deported, IE the spying accusation. It does sort of fit in with Tony's description of his father as cold and calculating.

*** This is about how I read it. Nick Fury mentions that the Russians were mad at Anton for not being able to come up with the goods, so I get the impression that they had a thing set up.

* Okay I swear the Mark II suit was changed between films. In the first one, it was a sort of dull gold/beige colour and in the second one, it's silver. Why the change?

*** Reread what was written. Vanko ''appears to'' have been an ordinary individual who copied Stark's technology. Important difference, especially when we're dealing with perceptions in the first place.

*** Also, Vanko did not damage armor that could shrug off tank shells. He damaged [[Fan Nickname|"Iron Man Light"]], the armor made of relatively thin plates over a wire framework, light and small enough to be carried around as a suitcase. It was not made of the gold-titanium alloy either, and had no flight systems. I seriously doubt that Vanko would have been able to last more than fifteen seconds against MK III, IV or VI.

**** In a way Vanko has the same mentality as Rocky Balboa. He doesn't have to "beat" the champ, he just has to go the distance with him. He doesn't have to win, he has to prove himself a viable threat. He has to fight just enough so that him beating Stark seems "possible." He has to put a tiny kernel of doubt into the public's mind as to Stark's invincibility. I never got the impression that Vanko's original plan was to beat Stark. He probably figured Stark would defeat him, possibly even kill him. He just wanted to get in a few good shots. After being defeated he didn't seem too broken up about it.<br />And as noted Stark was adamant not a few days earlier that no one was even close to his technology. Sure Vanko couldn't take down Stark, but imagine what havoc he could bring down on a group of civilians, police, or standard soldiers? It's like saying that if a New York street gang developed a 1 megaton nuclear weapon, it wouldn't be a viable threat because it's not as big as the nuke's the military has.

** Likewise, no one is really worried about someone else creating ONE Iron Man analogue. They were worried about an army of them. Stark says it will be at least a decade (in which he will be improving his suit constantly) before someone has something similar and viable. A day later, a tatooed thug shows up with something that is clearly analagous to Iron Man and can counter Tony's repulsors. The average person would not require much prodding to imagine an army of Whiplashes and what they could do.

** My main peeve with that scene: the first Whiplash is not armored. We can actually see Vanko's skin through it. And we're supposed to believe there wasn't ONE person with a firearm in the crowd? No police snipers nearby monitoring the situation? No cops with submachine guns? Not even a civilian with a .22? All it'd have taken to disable, perhaps even kill Vanko was ''one'' bullet. As long as he's just walking along the track it's believable that nobody'd just shoot the crazy dude being a nuisance, but as soon as he breaks out the whips, and certainly when he starts slicing cars, bullets would start flying. He should have been reduced into a red mess of holes before Stark even came into the scene.

**** [[Rule of Cool]]

* Black Widow taking her hair ''down'' to prep for a fight. If they wanted her to look all sexy they should have just done a [[Slipknot Ponytail]]. Because there's no way those long flowing locks aren't going to fall in her eyes and mouth when she's doing her thing, and even though she can deal with it, there's no point in purposely inhibiting yourself.

* Why, in the post-credits scene, is Agent Coulson driving a vehicle with a standard New Mexico license plate on the front? New Mexico license plates only go on the back.

** Maybe he gets a set of two plates because he just ''wants'' to? I know people with Kansas plates who use both a front and back plates almost soleley because they're used to the Missouri two-plate laws.

** Honestly, I'm willing to ignore the actual displayed number for one simple reason: placing the discovered element in the island of stability would explain why Howard Stark knew about it but couldn't synthesize it. He was able to demonstrate its existence mathematically, but the technology didn't exist for him to actually prove it.

*** Sorry, I (the troper who brought up the number) meant to say that I figured it was a second island of stability, up there in the multiple hundreds where nobody but Stark Sr. ever bothered to even look at it, but [[Cloudcuckoolander|forgot]].

** Also, the element that Howard Stark discovered was apparently based on research into Asgard technology. So, he's literally discovered something outside of our understanding regarding the universe.

** Ahem. Stated, very clearly and explicitly in the movie: "Arc Reactor tech was never cost-effective. We haven't had a major breakthrough in thirty years." The Vankos didn't improve on the Arc Reactor technology because, ''as far as they were aware'', it ''couldn't'' be improved on. Then along comes Tony Stark, who ''does'' improve on the tech, proving that it ''can'' be developed into something more efficient - which likely resulted in Vanko going back over the design and trying to figure out how Stark pulled it off. Note that Vanko doesn't just whip up the new design in a matte rof days like Tony did; it took him six months of work with a working blueprint and a rough understanding that the tech could be miniaturized, and he still ended up making an inferior design.

** Also, wasn't Vanko Jr in prison as well. Maybe he was only released in time to see Vanko Sr snuff it shortly afterward.

** Seems a little wobbly, but maybe seeing the mini-ark in Tony's chest inspired him, like the shape of it or the colour of light it emitted clued him in on how it's done.

* Here's something that's been bugging me. Does anyone know what if any legal basis there is for the U.S. Government seize the Iron Man armor from Stark at the beginning of the movie? I can kind of understand why they would have the legal impetus to do it after Tony started acting all unhinged because he was slowly being poisoned and started endangering random people, but I can't work out the legal reasoning behind it at the beginning of the movie. The tech is clearly Tony's private property, built with his own funds, so it's not like there's some financial reason the government can use to lay claim to the suit. As a weapon it clearly belongs to a class that has not yet been regulated (because it didn't before exist), so I'm not certain gun control laws apply to it.

** The US government considers some kinds of technology "born Secret" - no matter how it was developed, it's automatically government-owned classified technology, even if the government hasn't heard about it yet. It's a policy that was used when thermonuclear weapons were being developed and some civilians started guessing different methods for making them, and Tony's arc reactors seem to be tiny fusion reactors, so it applies. In the real world, all the Iron Man suits would have been siezed by force without a subcommittee hearing the second anyone knew they were in Tony's basement.

*** Of course, seizing that technology - especially from your premier weapons contractor - is easier said than done. Especially when said weapons designer is more likely to ''destroy'' his tech than let it fall into your hands, has enough personal firepower to destroy an armed division by himself, and can simply fire his jets and be in international waters in a matter of minutes. And as Rhodes points out, the military is on the verge of seizing Stark's suits anyway. The hearing here is likely to convince Stark to hand over his tech peacefully before the military decides to seize it themselves.

*** They also might be worried about pissing Tony off, especally when he's already shown his capabilities. Seizing the suits could potentially result in ''massive'' property damage and loss of life. Also, antagonizing Stark might be a bad idea, considering both his reputed level of genius and his ability to engineer advanced technology; you don't want to kill or hurt him, you don't want to make him defect, and you don't want him to become so disillusioned that he refuses to make ''anything'' else. The government has every reason to try to convince Tony to hand over his technology peacefully and convince him to cooperate.

**** Stark is too patriotic to ever defect. In the first movie he had already decided to get out of the weapons business, so it's not like the government had much to fear on that front.

** Yes, and I don't really recall Vanko drinking any more than a sip or two from a cup of unidentified liquid, or possibly (probably) two different cups.

** Wasn't the first shot of him in the movie Vanko leaning against a door with a vodka bottle dangling from his hand?

** What, are you kidding me? A jail-hardened Russian getting drunk after only one bottle of vodka? Please...

* How did the girl at the party throw a watermelon that size at least six feet in the air?

* Why does the Ex-Wife fail so spectacularly? Non of Hammer's other weapon enhancements to the Mach II failed to meet expectations.

** [[Rule of Funny]]. Plus, I find it hard to believe you could ''really'' fit that much power into something the size of a novelty pen.

*** All of the other weapon enhancements were made by other companies, as Hammer explicitly states. The Ex-Wife was the only piece of added hardware made by his company, and was the only one to fail. Better question is where all the ammunition was kept to keep multiple machine guns firing during the majority of a several minute battle.

*** Also think about minimum arming distance for a different reason. With a warhead as supposedly powerful as the "Ex-Wife's" would you really want it going off that close to the launcher? It could have been a safety mechanism.

** Cockatoo.

*** [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6007882/1/What_happened_to_the_burd Thank'ee].

** Well, Howard helped ''found'' SHIELD, for starters. So he probably told them about it. The problem with synthesizing it themselves is that when he figured out the element was there, the technology simply didn't exist yet. Plus, you probably need someone who's as much of a genius as Tony, he of the cave and box of straps. If you need someone to build something impossible, he's your man.

* Maybe it's just me, but most of Hammer's proposed weapons upgrades to the War Machine armor don't actually seem that impressive—or even sound, considering the platform. Heavier weapons like the minigun, grenade launcher, or even the shotgun system, sure. But...a 9mm ''pistol''? A 5.56 assault rifle, on a suit that's already equiped with a machine gun (firing a different caliber)? Especially considering the Stark-original weapons systems (repulsor beams, rockets) that it's already equipped with, it seems like strapping squirrel rifles onto a tank.

** More likely, if the Ex-Wife had worked as advertised, it wouldn't have even exploded when it hit Vanko - it likely would have simply punched through his armor and continued on. That's what bunker-busters do - they're designed to penetrate armor and go deep down to blow up hardened targets. Against Vanko, it would have been like a very powerful and large armor-piercing round, and likely would have liquefied his body, continued on, hit the back wall of the garden area they were in, and ''then'' explode. And even if it exploded against Vanko's armor, the garden was very wide-open; the danger of a bunker-buster comes from the fact that bunkers are very enclosed and underground. The corridors and rooms channel the force of the blast, and the concussive shockwave collapses the tunnels and walls to bury the people inside. Not only are the Iron Man suits pretty resistant to concussive force, but they're in an open area that gives the blast space to escape. On the surface, in open air, the bunker-buster is going to have a fraction of the killing power it would have underground.

** Maybe Rhodey hadn't actually read the instructions: as it was a "kinetic-kill, Side-winder vehicle with a secondary cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine RDX burst" weapon (and Hammer was ''obviously'' reading from the specs sheet, so he was saying exactly what the thing was supposed to do), Rhodey figured it would have at least penetrated Vanko's armor before exploding, and the armors would have protected him and Tony from the blast escaping the inside of the target (assuming it didn't explode after piercing him). This could also explain {{spoiler|why it didn't work: when it hit Vanko it was still building up the speed it needed for the job and arming the warhead, and when it impacted far before it had the necessary speed it simply bounced on Vanko's armor, with safeties preventing the secondary RDX charge from detonating in Vanko's face}}.

** Because there's ''more than one'' man in the world named "Ivan?" I mean, come on, its only a name possessed by about a ''million'' Russian men. What's the Senator supposed to do when he overhears Hammer chatting with one of his employees who has a common Russian name? Think that he's actually conversing with a murderous criminal who ''is supposed to be dead'', with a ''body'' and ''uniform'' to confirm it?

* At the end of the movie Ivan takes control of the drones. Understandable, he did make them after all. How on EARTH does he control War Machine. He didn't work on WM it was made by Hammer and the Military, not to mention it's a SUIT that has never been shown to operate autonomously (in the movies at least) otherwise surely Tony would've had an auto suit on stand by for things like the race track. Is this just a case of extreme hacker skills handwave? He's somehow able to remotely jack Rhodey's suit?

** War Machine was being modified by Hammertech with weapons supplied by Hammertech. That means that Hammertech had to have installed the modified weapons and that would mean Hammertech software at least for targeting - probably more. I wouldn't put it past Hammertech to have completely replaced the OS - in which case, Vanko could have taken control.

* At the party, everyone could clearly see that Stark was extremely drunk and began entertaining his guests with shooting whatever they tossed him. Wouldn't the guests be a bit more concerned that they could be hit if he missed the intended targets?

** Not if they were drunk, too. Also, most of those guests probably didn't really comprehend the danger of Stark's suit; the kind of rich, hob-nobbing types who would be at that kind of a party generally ''don't'' comprehend just how dangerous weapons like that really are, especially when they look as relatively innocuous as a little glowey light in Stark's palm.

** Tony is shitfaced drunk in what is essentially a ''weapon of mass destruction.'' If someone was drunk at the wheels of a tank or a jet, you'd be justified in stopping them, let alone a supersonic war machine that quite literally cannot be stopped by any modern weapons system. Tony is showing ridiculous levels of irresponsibility by parading around shitfaced while wearing the most powerful weapon in history - and he ''consciously made the choice'' to do that. It would be irresponsible of Rhodes to ''not'' stop him. Rhodes was acting in response to Tony's suicidal, destructive tendencies. This is especially important, as Tony Stark has been arguing that he is the only one responsible enough to use his technology, yet he then starts stomping around in it while ridiculously inebriated. That's not the behavior of the kind of person who's entrusted to enforce world peace. Also, he didn't ''steal'' the technology; as Nick Fury points out a scene later, Tony could have easily prevented Rhodes from taking his suit, but he didn't. He ''wanted'' Rhodes to take the suit.

** Watch the party scene again: Stark randomly fires off a beam that ''could have killed somebody'' while drunk. And you're seriously going to call Rhodes on stepping in and literally beating some sense into Tony for being ''that'' damned irresponsible with his flying suit of indestructablity? And more importantly, ''Tony'' is the one who starts the fight int he first place. Rhodes walks in, runs the guests out, and tells Tony that he's acting irresponsible and to shut off his suit. Tony's response is to turn around, tell the DJ to turn up the music so he can "beat my buddy's ass." Rhodes grabs Tony and demands he shut off his suit, and ''then'' Tony starts with the violence. in other words, Rhodes makes the - entirely reasonable - demand that Toiny stop being an irresponsible jerk with his suit, and Tony responds to this by attacking ''him.'' In this case, Stark is definitely the instigator of the fight, and Rhodes was perfectly in the right to stop him.

*** Don't forget that the entire reason why SHIELD intervenes here is because Tony Stark himself is getting out of control. It's a major part of the movie, and it's why Nick Fury himself rolls in and talks to Stark face-to-face and why they confine his to his home until he can shape up. Tony is self-destructive and everyone else is worried that he's going to implode and kill many innocents in the process.

** Of course Tony was being completely irresponsible with the suit, no one's arguing that. It's just that once Rhodey showed up in the other suit and everyone fled, the danger was pretty much gone. No danger of anyone getting hurt, and no drunk crowd egging him on and throwing watermelons for him to blast. Things pretty much ended at that point, yet Rhodey kept pushing him. The entire fight could've been avoided if Rhodey had just left after that point, sparing Tony's house from being blown up and his suit being stolen (which was a total dick move on Rhodey's part which also led to his technology falling in the wrong hands). Of course, if that stuff didn't happen, then the last half of the movie sorta wouldn't exist, but I still think that Rhodey was a much bigger jerkass than was EVER hinted at in the first movie.

** Also, note that the Senator is shown golfing with Hammer later on in the movie, and talking business. It is implied that part of his motivation is his apparent business dealings with Hammer.

* Would it have killed them to have shown a brief montage of Stark training or using the suit to explain why (and how) he's become so proficient w/ the armor?

** So (and no sarcasm as it really rather pointless to be sarcastic about it) hovering around inside a building for a few minutes actually makes it possible for someone to: 1) Fly across the Earth in an armored suit that has neither stabilizing wings nor that is aerodynamically built? 20 Engage armed opponents,including a tank? 3)Fly through a densely packed urban area avoiding and chasing drones? 4) Fly through an opening in a ceiling and land exactly on a mark on a stage? W/ staggering,stumbling,etc? A brief montage would have made that a little easier to believe?

** Why do we ''need'' a montage for all of that? In the first movie, Tony Stark spent ''three months'' preparing his new suit. It can safely be assumed that he was practicing with the suit, as evidence by, y'know, the fact that they showed him testing it. In the second movie, ''six more'' months have passed. Again, we can safely assume that Stark has been practicing with his suit.

** They should have faded to black, that's how you know more time has passed on a montage.

* Wouldn't Stark be looking at a DUI for flying the suit while impaired?

*** That's a pretty big stretch. By that logic, you could charge someone with a DUI just for ''sitting in'' a car after they've had a few drinks. Which is why I question whether DUI laws even apply to the Iron Man armor. It's not a motor vehicle or an aircraft in the traditional sense of the term. ''Do DUI laws even apply to it?'' We don't know. Additionally, Tony was operating the armor on his own property, meaning he has a lot more latitude in what he can do with it, just as you have a lot more latitude in what you can do with your car on your own property (for instance, you don't need car insurance or even a license to drive a car on your own property). And the fact that Tony was not caught in the act can't simply be blithely dismissed. Even if Tony was technically guilty of a DUI, he ''wasn't caught''. And a DUI is the kind of charge that you really do need to be caught doing in order to be charged with it. Finally, even if DUI laws apply to the Iron Man armor, even if Tony had been caught in the act, the fact that no one was hurt means at most he'd be looking at a misdemeanor, which a team of high-priced lawyers could ''easily'' knock down to community service.

**** You ''can'' charge someone with a DUI just for sitting in a car after they've had a few drinks, as long as they're in the driver's seat (and in some states, they may need to have the keys in the ignition). The whole point of the Iron Man system is that it's a life support machine (a pacemaker with an add-on Mobility Enhancement Device) on [[Tim Taylor Technology]]. The suit is not a car, the suit is not a gun, for someone's sake ''the suit is no an aircraft''. It can be divided into these parts: 1: Repulsors, 2: Computers, 3: Arc reactor, 4: Exoskeleton and motive system. The computers are nothing new, unless you count {{[[Voice with an Internet Connection]] Jarvis]]. The exoskeleton and motive system are good, but they're just pieces of metal and the electric motors/hydraulics/etc. used to control them, and as long as Tony doesn't try to drive it down a public street it's not breaking any vehicular laws (other than no-fly zones, if he doesn't plan ahead for that). The important things are the arc reactor and the repulsors. The miniaturized arc reactor is nuclear power, but it is cold nuclear power, and as far as anyone but Tony knows it is still clean energy (based on the full-sized, perfectly functional arc reactor), and the repulsors are, again, something totally new and have yet to be graded as weapons (or even to be determined weapons, since other tools like a wrecking ball or a bolt gun are just as or more deadly but [[Obvious Rule Patch|generally]] do not count as weapons beyond "[[Improvised Weapon]]" status). That is the entire point of the second movie: That the Iron Man system is currently unregulated and a potential security threat to the United States and [[Person of Mass Destruction|civilization in general]], and they need to decide whether to ask politely for it and leave Tony alone if he refuses or demand it and send the tanks after him if he refuses. Whether Tony gets a drunk driving ticket or not depends on whether or not the courts decide that riding the Iron man suit at altitude is considered driving or flying (newfangled repulsory-thingies are technically neither flying not jet propulsion until they are deemed so), and they haven't gotten around to that molehill because of the mountain they need to flatten first.

** Common law (which is what most of the US uses) is about the adaptive interpretation of statutes and precedent. Sure, there might not have been a law on the books saying, "It is a felony to fly an arc-reactor powered suit across state lines," or whatever, but plenty of laws, even if they don't explicitly prohibit a given behavior, can be reasonable be interpreted to prohibit that behavior. Judges are always applying laws in novel ways. Saying that Iron Man isn't committing a DUI because the suit doesn't run on gasoline won't go far with most judges - it's like saying that the Fourth Amendment doesn't provide at least some right against the search of your computer by the government since it's not "papers." Also, as an entirely separate matter, this is the MARVEL UNIVERSE. Even if studio contracts mean that Spider-Man doesn't exist here, this IS the same universe that features the Hulk and Thor and Captain America. It's almost impossible to think that there aren't going to be laws on the books related to superhuman behavior one way or another.

* Why was Rhodes given the silver armour? it's established that Stark gave him access to a suit to be a successor, so why give him an outdated one? A shot of the old suits is shown when Jarvis is introduced in the sequel, and there are 2 gold and titanium ones. Assuming Stark is wearing the latest one at the party, where is the other one?

** Note that the development cycle for a new weapons platform can be greatly extended when you have to pretty much design the entire system from scratch, using new technologies. With the Stark suits, they already have both a working model of the suit to study and a working example of the technology that powers it. Reverse-engineering Stark's designs would be dramatically easier than building something to match it from scratch.

** Also note that a substantial part of the underlying technology in the Stark suits is already developed and available. The Hammeroids didn't spring fully-formed from Justin Hammer's brow. They're crap compared with Tony's suit, but they're still working humanoid war machines, minus the unfortunate tendency to break their wearers' backs. The development cycle will be greatly reduced compared with the F-22's hilarious history of screwups.

** Or he could be speaking metaphorically and not literally. Kind of how the phrase "I want this yesterday" works. remember that in context, Rhodes says that Tony was banking on no one else having the technology for years to come.

*** Most probably that, as Vanko's reactor is in the hands of the ''French'' governement.

*** What bits and pieces of it remains after Tony crushed it with his armored hands, you mean.

* So apparently Howard Stark discovered an element that could replace palladium (though he never actually synthesized this element), and he communicates the secret of this element...via the layout of the Stark Expo. Um, why didn't he just ''write it down''? Like, with all his other notes and stuff. "I've discovered an element with an atomic weight of 504..."

** This. He specifically wanted his son to be the one to develop it, so he left the actual key to developing the new element in a place that only his son might be able to figure out. It is also probable that he didn't want someone ''else'' to develop the technology; the Stark line has a thing for not letting anyone but themselves have access to their own tech.

** Howard Stark has firsthand experience with [[Captain America: The First Avenger|what happens when the wrong people get access to hyperadvanced technology]]. He would have every reason to cover up his discovers until someone he trusts, like his son, finds it.

** He looked had the reactor schematics. Being as clever as he is, he appears to have pieced together that wearing an Arc Reactor in your chest will get bad stuff in your veins. Remember: he's a damned good engineer and a genius on Tony's level. The fact that he pieced together that Tony was dying from simply knowing about the Arc Reactor's design and properties indicates as much.

 

[[Category:Headscratchers]]