Thanks to technology - and lack of Hollywood imagination - many comic book super heroes have graced silver screen in recent years. Perhaps no super hero’s story is more relevant to the times and more rooted in America than that of the Marvel hero Ironman. Unfortunately the actual story of the Invincible Ironman was far too pro-American for Hollywood writers, directors, and animators.
In 1963 Marvel comics created Tony Stark, a brilliant, creative, and cunning American defense contractor who developed state of the art weapons for the American government during the Vietnam War. In return for his contribution to fighting communism in Vietnam, Tony Stark enjoyed great wealth and fame.
While field testing his revolutionary transistors for the US military, Stark would fall victim to a guerilla booby-trap and be captured by the enemy. The explosion lodged inoperable shrapnel near his heart. If the shrapnel were to reach his heart Tony Stark would die.
His captor, understanding who their prisoner was, sought to trick Stark into betraying his country to save himself. Wong-Chu, the “red guerilla tyrant”, told Stark that he would have to develop a “powerful new weapon” to use against the Americans in exchange for the operation that would save his life. Stark, seeing the deal for the lie it was, agreed and used the technological components given to him to build a weapon to save his life and restore his freedom.
As fate would have it, Stark was not the only scientist in captivity. With the assistance of a captive famous Vietnamese physicist named Yinsen, Stark set out to prevent his own demise and ensure the two scientists escape despite being under the watchful eyes of the Vietnamese guerilla warlord. The duo created a mechanized chest plate which kept Starks heart pumping and a suit of armor that was powered by Starks amazing transistors. Although Yinsen was killed facilitating Starks escape, Tony forcibly defeated Wong-Chu and his men. The invincible Ironman was born.
Today almost the entire story is so politically incorrect to the American left that Ironman’s origin had to be, under the guise of contemporization, completely transformed in the new DVD animation released last week by Marvel and Lions Gate Entertainment.
Tony Stark had to be a genius of course - liberals always are -, but his father had to be the evil weapons developer. Naturally Tony had fallouts with dad over the morality of weapons development which would eventually lead to daddy firing his own son from Stark Enterprises and betraying his brilliant son to the SHIELD (Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division secret service) for that the agency suspected was treason.
To liberals Tony Stark had to be a well intentioned but vile profit seeking businessman who meddled into China for money only to awaken a great evil; an evil which he was responsible to stop.
It is truly amazing how money and liberals can neuter the only truly appropriate superhero for the modern times. Hollywood has opted to animate an interesting and compelling superhero to make a one time social statement? The true story of Ironman was so dangerous that Lions Gate felt compelled to reinforce the liberal mantra of America’s evil capitalist underpinnings and to display how American greed creates the evil it must combat in the world.
The writers, directors, and producers ignore an endless stream of potential sequels as they manage to avoid the endless potential that the Ironman character presents to the movies and animation is shunted because Americans mustn't believe capitalism can be any good? Totally absent is the creative ingenuity of Tony Stark, his ability to adapt and overcome his selfless desire to do what’s right despite his lack of financial need or responsibility.
The Invincible Ironman DVD entirely misses the heart – or moral - to the Ironman saga. The Ironman story isn’t about firepower, or muscle, or greed, or culpability, or morality, or even wicked cool technology; it’s about Tony Stark –the American, the industrialist, the weapons designer, the millionaire, the playboy- and his ability to overcome virtually anything using his ingenuity.
But to the liberal producers, writers, and animators, those admirable qualities combined with the “American way” are passé, out dated, regressive, and (sad to say) taboo for an American audience.
