#early mcu

[shi-the-second]

[puppygar]

“I’m the Human Torch, ladies just call me Torch.”

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A little more Fantastic Four (2005) Fanart! Think I might do a page for the other three too! (Finish Reed’s page lol) I had a lot of fun drawing this and his flames!

[alirhi]

Rewatching the first Iron Man has me thinking about the early MCU, my favorite (and least favorite) characters in it, and why.

Mainly it's about why I have hated Steve Rogers for so long (and still find MCU Steve irritating, though I've grown to love a version of him that lives in my head so I can properly write about Bucky lol). I won't get into all my issues and biases right now (and yes, I freely admit I was biased against "Captain America" long before he ever appeared on my screen, but that's a whole other thing). It's late, I'm tired, and that would be a very long post I just don't have the energy for. I'll just cut right to the thought nagging at me as I watch the climax of Iron Man:

"You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play..." Fuck you, Rogers. Yes, Tony Stark has an ego, but in phase 1 he's not nearly as selfish as they later write him to be. A dick, yeah. That's part of what makes him fun. He plays in the gray and I love that.

But in his very first appearance in the MCU, we see him willing to die rather than give his latest WMD to the people holding him hostage, deceiving them (also high risk of death) to build the suit and the mini arc reactor to power the suit and get himself and Yinsen out, not just to keep the shrapnel out of his heart, and at the end of the movie, pretty sure he'll get fried and die, he tells Pepper to fry the roof to stop Stane. He had no way of knowing he would survive that and he didn't care. Stopping the psycho was more important.

Oh, and the Mark 1 suit/arc? Anyone remember this bit? "That could power your heart for 50 lifetimes!" "Or something big for 15 minutes."

15 minutes. There was a chance he'd deplete the reactor and the shrapnel would enter his heart and kill him in fifteen fucking minutes and he still didn't even hesitate because taking out the bad guys and getting Yinsen home to his family was more important to him.

There's a lot more nuance to all of this, obviously. I will never try to make the argument that Tony Stark is a saint. Not even close. He's flawed and messy and that's why I fucking like him. But...yeah. Yeah he really is "the guy to make the sacrifice play." He's done it.

Side note: most of my non-bias-related distaste for MCU Steve has more to do with shitty writing and terrible corporate decisions than the character himself. Cap stans just...piss off. I'm too tired to argue.

[shi-the-second]

[shi-the-second]

[shi-the-second]

[shi-the-second]

[shi-the-second]