With Iron Man 3 already out in the UK and it’s May 3rd American release looming on the golden horizon, it is natural to get swept up in Iron Mania, scrambling to get your Repulsor-mitts around anything and everything Iron Man related – from plushies, special edition blu-rays, and comics, to shell head hoodies and Stark shot glasses – you’ll have so much iron you would swear you had hemochromatosis. In the midst of this iron rampage, however, you may have come across Iron Man, an animated artifact from the mysterious and grungy time known as the 90s. You may disregard the series as an obsolete adaptation of one of the better heroes of today, but you would be overlooking something—this show is insane. On the surface, it is an animated series revolving around the Armored Avenger, but strip away the gold and red armor and you’re left with a madman’s sonata, a cacophony of eldritch abominations flailing at one another with the skins of Marvel characters crudely stapled to their great and terrible flesh. If thou be willing, and strong of heart and mind, then read on to see how deep this armored rabbit hole goes.
5. It’s basically just He-Man wearing Iron Man armor.
Before we can delve into the insanity of Iron Man, you have to first understand the insanity of He-Man, a series of seemingly random toys in the 1980s that launched a cartoon series to help sell said toys. Now, while Iron Man originally existed as a comic, the first season takes more inspiration from He-Man than anything else. Don’t believe me?
Well to start, both shows are about two individuals who are clearly the same person, and yet inexplicably no one can put two and two together—Tony Stark with his “bodyguard” Iron Man and Prince Adam with He-Man. Both feature an inexplicably random group of villains living together to fight a group of heroes who live together—Iron Man with his Force Works, a bootleg Avengers, and The Mandarin who lives with apparently all of Iron Man’s rogue gallery. Both even feature an episode focusing on a fake version of the protagonist! The plots, at least for the first season, therefore, rarely diverge from what feels like a six year old narrating a battle between his Iron Man action figures.
Perhaps most significantly, however, is that both shows cut costs by just reusing the exact same stock footage of the main hero “powering up” into his alter ego. He-Man constantly reused his power up scene where he shouts “By the power of Greyskull, I have the power” — a phrase that I never realized sounded so redundant until actually seeing it written out- – and Iron Man reused his suiting up sequence in every episode, at every given opportunity. Why this is troublesome is that the power-up sequence depicts a lab-coat wearing Stark powering up in a metal room, so you’ll have Tony in the Jungle or in the Himalayas only to inexplicably be indoors for twenty seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBIjC3JhZD0
Here’s the thing though, that armor-up sequence that they replay every episode is likely the most expensive shot in the entirety of the series, as its a CGI rendered Iron Man shot that perfectly reflects the nineties in its quality. Whenever Tony puts on his helmet, the animation does a rough — and I’m talking having to take the MCAT printed on sandpaper with a number one pencil levels of rough — bleed transition from the animated style to the awkward CGI. Now, if CGI is crazy expensive today, I can only imagine the virgin sacrifice necessary to get twenty seconds of Tony Stark just raising his arms up and down in the Iron Man armor, which brings me to my next point…
4. The producers cut costs, and with it, logic
My theory? The producers of Iron Man must have just dumped so much cash into their two CGI scenes, the aforementioned awkward Stark power up shot and a shot of Iron Man rocketing out of his laboratory, which for 90s based technologies must have cost a fortune in spite of its ugly nature, and then just tried to save costs across the board in an attempt to break even somehow. That’s why Stark’s voice suddenly changes if he has any lines during these CGI armor bits, reflective of animators realizing they had dead-air in these sequences and ran out of funds to call the voice actor back in. So instead they just got some guy to growl a bad Stark impression into a microphone before saying screw it and calling it a day. Likewise, although Fresh Prince alum and voice of The Shredder, James Avery is one of the few glimmers of hope in the first season as the voice of War Machine, Avery was apparently unavailable at times, or the producers only wanted to write one pay check, as War Machine’s voice changes from Avery to Jim Cummings (MODOK’s voice actor) and back to Avery in certain episodes.
Of course, every animated show at one point or another featured cost-cutting measures such as this, but the Iron Man producers also phone it in when it comes to plot points. For example, there is an entire episode surrounding an irradiated group of Russian submariners who have been turned into zombies. Tony Stark and crew fight these radioactive zombies for the length of the episode, as well as the Mandarin’s grab bag of villains who live with him. The foes clash, every team member does a flamboyant display of their powers, and Force Works is able to beat back the Mandarin’s horde to fight another day.
After Iron Man and friends spent the entire episode fighting irradiated Russian submariner zombies, and with about two minutes left of airtime, the British warlock Century just turns the zombies back into humans at the end of the episode. It’s like, seriously guy? You literally could’ve solved this problem at any time but you just wanted to punch some radioactive Russians in the face, huh?
Seriously, in the first episode Tony needs to do some deep-sea work, so he dons an Iron Man armor that allows him to explore the bottom of the sea. That’s fine, but when he is ambushed by Mandarin’s cronies and gets back up support from Force Works, everyone is just wearing a bubble helmet, until Fing Fang Foom is ultimately summoned into the fray. The Scarlet Witch is just wearing a cocktail dress mind you.
If you think that’s bad, Tony Stark once was able to power up his armor by siphoning the energy off of a Walkman — full power, off of something that runs off of like eight AAA batteries. I don’t even need a joke here, as the show did my job already.
Playing Devil’s Advocate, this is a show for children right? So it makes sense as to why there would be some holes in logic. Iron Man is the only one who needs to wear a deep diver suit because kids don’t understand underwater pressure. Here’s the thing though…
3. It’s Not Actually Meant for Children
With all of these plot holes and abandonment of visual consistency, the writers of Iron Man were able to slip in some seemingly adult themes.
The first indication that this show was not meant for the TV Y-7 crowd is hidden in Stan Lee’s live-action intros to the show. In these introductions, Stan Lee essentially gives away 90 percent of the plot that occurs in the episode to follow, addressing the audience as “cultural enthusiasts,” which is a fancy way of saying adult comic-book fans who need to watch a children’s cartoon to satisfy their Iron Man lust, or simply, nerds.
Of course I just assumed that this was a means of obtaining the largest possible audience for this show without alienating a particular age group of fans. I did however start to notice some odd references that were clearly not meant for children; jokes about Madonna’s marriages, or Liv Tyler’s efficiency in obtaining ex-husbands, references to the “Goliath, online” quote from Starcraft, and the fact that Bill Clinton appears as himself as Tony Stark’s boss. All adult references sure, but nothing too far out of the ordinary.
Then The Mandarin called Fing Fang Foom, a dragon under his employ that constantly has smoke coming out of his mouth in a way that makes it look like he has lit cigs caught in his teeth, a reptilian jackass.
I didn’t know you could say jackass in a children’s cartoon. So I started to really watch this show closely, much to the chagrin of my sanity, and sure enough, this wasn’t just one instance that slipped through the censors.
Take for example, Hawkeye. Hawkeye is supposed to say “they [heroes] take out the garbage,” and yet it sounds exactly like, “they take out the guard bitch.” I replayed it three times; this is exactly what he says. No, I have not the slightest clue what he means by this phrase as he readies himself for an attack by Hypnotia, who is a grown woman wearing a Rainbow Brite costume, nor if Hawkeye means he takes out the guard-bitch, or takes out the “guard, bitch!”
And then Hawkeye says, not two minutes later, “I hate squishy women,” before firing an arrow that’s attached to a small electric fan in order to blow back Hypnotia’s telepathic waves. I just want you to think long and hard about that sentence, really drink it all in. Okay, now did you nod your head because that made complete and utter sense to you? That’s great. Second question: do you smell pennies?
2. Just…yeah
How would you react to the following phrases?
“You destroyed my patagonias! Unforgivable! But I’ll spare you.”
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you…to never mess with magnets?”
“QUICKLY MODOK, TO THE GARDEN!”
“I can see the headline now; Tony Stark hit by his own missiles.”
“C’mon Jimmy, give your old boss man your pal.”
“Our house is made of glass and we’re running around without pants!”
“You dork mister!”
“Ten tons of evil in a one ton bag.”
“What a pity you’re not aware of my presence, if you were, you would be trembling to be so close to my bold…manly…MACHISMO!”
“Machismo? Ain’t that Spanish for dipstick?”
These are all quotes taken from the show. The last two quotes in particular are actually an allusion to a dick joke, followed by confirmation of said allusion. You throw on any episodes of the first season of this show and you’ll get phrases worthy of the gothic literary genre.
Mind you, the show doesn’t just assault your hearing. Ignoring the obvious visual consistencies, which is easier said than done, when the show does produce visual material that doesn’t defy time and space, it is still somewhat absurd.
Take for example Whirlwind, a guy who strapped buzz saws to his arms and twirls around so quickly that it produces a cyclone. Capable of flight, he is one of the Mandarin’s go-to aerial soldiers in addition to Dreadknight, who is a skull-faced Knight that rides a demonic Pegasus. Whirlwind can fly, and yet, he needs Dreadknight to pick him up, grasping Dreadknight’s torso tightly, as if Dreadknight were taking his sea-foam green comrade to the Sadie Hawking dance.
And then you have MODOK, the Mental Organism Designed Only-for Killing, hiding in a baby stroller. Not like in a baby outfit or anything, just floating in a stroller with Hypnotia pushing him along, as MODOK’s size changes from episode to episode.
1. But no really, it is insane.
Perhaps what is the most insane thing about this show however, is that for all of its plot holes, lack of visual cohesion, and slipped in swears, it actually features plot points that would be later redone in Iron Man 3. Seriously, without giving away anything beyond the trailer, two episodes are devoted to a wounded Tony Stark who is forced to abandon his cracked Iron Man suit in a frozen tundra. The armor’s AI is apparently also the narrator of the show, and when in this episode, replays a memory module playback, a literal best of reel of Tony Stark’s past, complete with different camera angles and shots of things Tony Stark wasn’t even present for.
Had the show ran for more than two seasons, it’s quite likely that we would’ve gotten a plot of Tony Stark being trapped under a really big tree watching a playback of him watching a playback, ad infinitum. To answer the question about how you can even transfer memories in hologram form, I answer that Tony Stark built nano-weave armor in a cave with a box of scraps. Oh, and also a hologram projector, and a surprisingly realistic Tony Stark mask.
That’s not me being flippant, that’s the show. During the inevitable clip show episode, which appears in the first season oddly enough, both the Scarlet Witch, Jim Rhodes, and British wizard axe enthusiast Century question how Tony is able to show us his memories, only for Tony to continue feeding us the plot of a filler episode, likely avoiding the undeniable truth that Tony Stark realized long ago that he is just an animated character in a fictional universe, a dream of a psychopath’s ghost.
Even the villains acknowledge how much of a “bummer” it is for the Mandarin to force them to watch flashbacks, only for the episode to pull back into the brain of Tony Stark as he zones out during his own wedding. To recap, that’s a memory of Tony watching Tony watching memories. Oh but wait, that’s not even Tony Stark contemplating his life, it’s a Tony Stark robot. Androids do dream of electric sheep apparently, and this robot technically just married Spider-Woman, who proceeds to waltz with her as the episode ends as the robot loops “It was a lovely wedding,” chest circuitry in full visibility. Mind you, this is a Stark designed simuloid, which is a term real doll enthusiasts use to describe their PVC based partners, a thing which I really wish I didn’t know, so you know that Stark robot is going to work right and properly. Spider-Woman likely inserted her own, Saturday night home alone, program into the absurdly detailed cyber brain.
I understand that clip show episodes are typically always bad, with Community’s flashback episodes being the sole exception to the rule, but Iron Man is already a show made up of clips of old episodes. So essentially, someone deemed a flashback of a flashback episode necessary. That’s a level of phoning it in that would only be eclipsed by that episode of Friends, where Chandler has to spend the holidays in Malta so he flashes back to other Christmas episodes. Just phoning in a cop-out.
Of course this is just the insanity that appears in Season 1, so let us know what you think—is this one of those shows that you’re just supposed to turn your brain off for? Is it racist that Jim Rhodes is afraid of water? Is the Season 2 rendition of “Iron Man” the best intro song in television history? Let us know in the comments!