Marvel Cinematic Universe

Damn, most of the stuff I'd want is already sold. Or way too expensive.

Should've guessed the Pimp Stormtrooper uniform would be $3000+

I've started a rewatch of the entire MCU in chronological order (as opposed to order of release) and I got to Iron Man, and I noticed something that might become relevant in the Shang-Chi movie.

Raza (the main Ten Rings commander), isn't actually confirmed dead. He gets paralyzed by Stain, and then Stain has all of Raza's men gunned down, but unless I'm very mistaken Raza himself isn't shown being killed.

I was very surprised to see this (I don't think I've watched Iron Man all the way through since it was in theaters), especially since our character page on Raza treats his death as if it's totally unambiguous.

Now given that characters who only previously appeared in Iron Man coming back in recent movies is hardly unprecedented, I kind of wonder if Raza is going to show up in Shang-Chi.

He could either be a disgraced former member of the Ten Rings that Shang-Chi gets some inside information from, or he was merely demoted after the disaster for him that were the events of Iron Man, and now serves in a role other than command.

Interesting...

Re the Judas Bullets, I'll never not find it amusing (and emblematic of the Netflix shows' problems) that the Judas Bullets were presented as about as good as you could get from Chitauri-derived tech, and they were comparably piddling and pretty expensive. And then over in Spiderman: Homecoming, Toomes and Davis are buying and selling alien weapons of mass destruction like popcorn

So pretty much what we expect of MCU Hammer Tech,

Nah. Hammer tech may often malfunction, but I think Justin Hammer is exactly the kind of guy who would sell someone an alien Wave-Motion Gun with no questions asked.

He'll be in the same Ten Rings prison cell as Trevor for his failure.

Meant along the lines of Always Second Best, because even with Tony out someone is still beating them in the weapons game.

It's definitely going to be a bird cage-looking thing hanging from the ceiling, right?

Could be.

Or depending on how international the Ten Rings are, I could see him pop up in a scene showing all the leaders of the various cells. With the assumption that he either avoided serious penalty or was able to work his way back up the ranks.

I don't know, I was genuinely shocked when I watched the scene and realized "hang on, Raza isn't killed onscreen".

Edited by Falrinn on Aug 12th 2019 at 10:57:00 AM

Stane's assassins weren't likely to miss a paralyzed man being shot at from point-blank range.

Tony Stark's crowning jewel is either the Arc reactor, a perpetual energy generator of near-limitless power, or the Iron Man armor; a suit of nearly-indestructible armor that gives you the power to take on an army, fight gods and aliens, and outrace fighter jets.

Justin Hammer's crowning jewel is a bullet.

A bullet that doesn't even work.

So, looking at Iron Man 2, how far do you think other countries got in copying the Iron Man suit? Tony gave it 5-10 years, but what do you think?

I think we're just supposed to assume everyone gave up after Hammer failed, though there's no logical reason why that would be the case.

In 2015, Canada was two screws away from completing their first Iron Ranger when an Ultron drone suddenly flew through the window and broke it and the harddrive containing all the design data.

In 2016, New Zealand was en route to deploying the Kiwi Defense Fleet but the Vision's laser that hit Rhodey kept going, bounced off a satellite, and blew up the warehouse.

In 2018, Uruguay's top scientists, studying heavily to protect their nation from an invasion of kangaroos, unveiled their grand army of Kangabusters, powerful enough to kill Thanos ten times over, but alas, they were all on an airplane that crashed when Thanos's Snap killed the pilot. 2023 Uruguay is now a kangaroo dystopia.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Aug 12th 2019 at 10:33:02 AM

I imagine a lot of R&D budgets in the MCU have shifted from trying to engineer the next Iron Man armor to just trying to reverse engineer whatever alien technology they can scavenge.

The thing is that the level of technology of the Iron Man suit when Tony Stark made his prediction is far beneath the level of technology that the Iron Man suit ended up at.

Yeah, they could have people start to reach IM 1 levels of technology.

Honestly it feels like they should be a bit further along, since Tony couldn't have expected how much alien technology would be floating around by this point.

By the time of Endgame, Stark's tech has progressed to the point of being able to quickly build a more versatile (though less stable and protective) version of the Infinity Gauntlet. In other words, it rivals (and in some ways surpasses) the magitek of the greatest smiths in the universe.

It wasn't armor but the Extremis formula was actually more powerful than various specialized Iron Mens armors.

Shame about the exploding though. Kind of a drawback.

It really makes the first Iron Man movie such an interesting watch because of how different the armor feels from what it is now.

It moves very..... weighty with more calculated emphasis in its movements is if processing how to function in motion.

The technology level SHIELD had in The Avengers made the idea that only Tony could build a functional Powered Armor rather implausible. Maybe not as awesome and functional as a Stark armor, but something close.

Maybe it's just impractical from a cost/benefit viewpoint.

Like, they could have all of R&D focus on IM suits that require a LOT of training and budget, or they can make dozens of other technologies which can be used for lots of things thoughout the organisation.

We could get people like Black Knight or Unicorn or Killer Shrike that way, with the explanation that people are finally starting to replicate Iron Man's tech.

I think Living Laser could work as the result of a failed attempt to replicate Bifrost tech.

I always thought it was funny that beyond the biggest ones, Iron Man's comics rogues gallery are pretty much designed to be Elite Mooks and Jobbers to be used as space filling villains or minor characters, but because Iron Man was the flagship series the move was instead to adapt them as these huge, personal arc driving master antagonists instead, resulting in relatively few of them being adapted. But hey, that could always change.

As for Never Found the Body loopholes, I think Raza was more of a Gory Discretion Shot than an example of someone who didn't die onscreen. A better example, I think, is Vanko - to the point where I used to wonder if the plan was to bring him back in a smaller role later. Though Mickey Rourke is very unlikely to return, ever, so that's moot regardless.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 13th 2019 at 12:12:42 PM

Guys, should I bid on one of the $100 lots in the Netflix auction? I'm actually kinda tempted...

Some of that stuff looks really awesome. If I had the money to do so, I would've bid on the stuff from Pops' shop.