Look, just one more of these blasted superheroes and we'll get out of your hair, okay? Especially since this one's such a doozy. And another one where killing is part of the character development. Kinda messed up that so many Marvel movies involve a grown man realising that murdering loads of people probably isn't all right but, hey, it's comic books, innit? Tony Stark begins his first film as a billionaire industrialist whose company produces weapons and miscellaneous armaments that are specifically designed to kill. So there, right from the start, our "hero" is indirectly responsible for the deaths of many in Afghanistan and Iraq, thanks to the stuff he sold to the US military. Things don't actually get much better when he becomes a superhero and decides to steer Stark Industries away from weapons manufacture, as during his escape from captivity in the prototype armour he blows up something like twenty insurgents, adding another thirteen when he has the suit properly sorted and decides to return to a dusty war-torn country to show off what he can do. Whilst AC/DC plays (but it could just as easily have been DVDA) By comparison, the first film's villain - Jeff Bridge's bizarrely bald Obadiah Stane - is responsible for killing two people during the climactic battle. And then Pepper Potts shoots him in the head and kills him. So that's a grand total of two deaths for the villain, whilst the hero of Iron Man has the blood of 32 people on his hands. We hope that metal is wipe-clean.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
