By Joshua Christianson
From Man to Iron Man
“I love you three-thousand.”
We’ve looked at the responsibility which shapes the genius of Tony Stark. We’ve explored how it magnifies his failures and seen the inevitability of failing in life. But there is one final, crucial part to understanding what makes him truly Iron Man: the way he grows from failure.
Tony Stark’s story is about a narcissist who learns to be a hero. A heartless arms dealer who learns to love and protect people. A man as weak as anyone who builds himself an iron soul. His journey from playboy, to hero, to teammate, to reformer, to guardian, to at last the savior of the universe, is one of genius and self-transformation and shows us that the two are interconnected.
Every failure he encounters in the films becomes a stepping stone to his own progress. While we mostly don’t get to see the process outside of the first film, his constant trial and error over the course of years slowly improves his armor, technology, and even his life. In the first movie, he struggles to fly, and once he gets a full suit ready he flies too high and the whole thing loses power. A little while later he corrects these problems and tries again. In the next movie, he has made his suit portable and accessible on the go. In movie three he can summon his armor from anywhere nearby, and has built countless different versions. By the time Infinity War rolls around his suit is fully nanotechnology, and available at a moments notice.
Though it’s not obvious, he lives the rest of his life the same way- trying, failing, and improving. Attempting to start a romance with Pepper Potts in the first film, for the next few years, their rocky relationship has them struggling with his PTSD, inability to quit hero work, and many other issues. But by the final film, he’s learned how to make it work, marrying her and settling down. His road to fatherhood is rough as well, and his efforts to mentor Peter Parker in Spiderman: Homecoming reveal how little he knows about helping young people grow. But with time and loss, he learns to be better and is a good father to his daughter, Morgan. Morally he undergoes the same pattern, failing and learning how to work in a team, failing and learning how to protect the world, failing and learning how to be a real hero.
While his mistakes are like anyone’s, his ultimate successes are thanks to his genius. In striving to become the best possible version of himself Tony Stark time and again builds himself better than he was before. This is the nature of all genius. All of us have to face struggles in our lives. Genius lies in learning and growing with every struggle until success is finally achieved.
If we want to pursue genius or instill it in others we have to see it for what it really is: struggle to live well. To live as people who can step up, do hard things, and grow from every experience. We can try to avoid that struggle until it’s too late, or, like Tony Stark, we can meet it head-on. Yes, Tony Stark always seemed like a man born with an amazing brain, but a real look at his story doesn’t bear that out. He was just a man, like any other, willing to change and learn when he failed. That’s what made him a genius. It’s what let him save the world. And maybe if we live a little like that, and keep trying, failing, and transforming, we can be iron men and women too.