#okay i know some people hate this scene because they think it’s whedon making fun of cap#and that might have been how he intended it#but the way evans and rdj played it is so perfect#because there’s steve’s sass coming back#‘seriously?’#‘seriously tony?’#‘what exactly are you expecting from me?’#‘it’s been like a week and a half since i got here from the 40s’#‘what does it look like?’#‘well it seems to run on some form of electricity’#unspoken ‘you moron’#and tony’s response is just like#‘i don’t know what i was expecting’#‘you got me there’#i don’t know#i just thought the two of them played it perfectly off each other [via invisiblespork]
And then we never see Tony explain to Steve how to fix it, so Steve seems to have figured it out anyway
The thing is, Tony has proven more than once that he can “dumb down” what he knows to make it make sense to everyone else. He does it with Harley in IM3, he did it earlier in Avengers explaining the iridium, and he does it here with Steve.
When Tony gets in his own head, Steve snaps, “Speak English!” and Tony automatically shuts down the nerd talk and says “You see that red lever?” Then explains what the lever is going to do in simple, Steve and audience friendly terms.
So actually, Tony did likely guide Steve through checking the panel in a way that was clear, concise, and simple but not condescending. Because Tony knows he’s the smartest person there, he’s always known, but he’s also had to run a company of people who can’t talk shop with him. He has to be able to speak in a way shareholders and investors will understand. Hell, he talked Harley through repairing the MK42 in IM3 over the phone while driving.
Tony doesn’t get enough credit for being an excellent science communicator who can also pick up the social cues that tell him to code switch between teacher mode and shop talk.
