After the colossal success of Iron Man that kicked off Phase I of the MCU, shortly followed by Iron Man 2 & 3, you’d be forgiven for thinking that another installment would indubitably be on its way. We may not be getting an Iron Man 4 movie anytime soon, or even ever, it’s still a bit unclear, but a guy can have dreams, right? This is the part where you say: “Dreams? No. Delusions? Yes.” Regardless, here are a few reasons I believe we should get Iron Man 4. Let’s get stuck in!
6. Extremis
Extremis was the biological virus used by Aldrich Killian to create an army of fire-breathing soldiers we saw in Iron Man 3. Aldrich himself was afflicted by it, as was Pepper, to which we don’t know the extent of her recovery after exposure. The virus works by re-writing the DNA of the affected so that they are resistant to cellular damage or decay. The side effects are that the subject develops the superpowers we’re familiar with. Now, the reason why I bring this up is because there is a storyline in the Iron Man comics where Tony is badly wounded and his only choice of survival is exposure to the extremis virus. He lives, and the effects are that part of his suit becomes integrated with his body allowing him to summon it at will as well as remotely access satellites, computers and electronic systems. He basically becomes a technopathic cyborg. Awesome right?
Now, with all this in mind, imagine what he can do when he can remotely operate all of his suits, hack into security systems, satellites, mobile phones and the like just with his mind. Imagine the new level of superheroism that would bring about. We saw a sliver of that in the last film with him summoning his suit from almost 900 miles away but that was never again touched upon. But imagine if Pepper discovers that’s something she can do, or if Rhodey uses it. The more I think about it, the more the possibilities become endless. It would be a great tool to have when dealing with new threats and advancing into the quickly approaching Infinity War storylines. We’ve seen plenty of innovative ways Tony Stark reconfigures his suits, so who knows what could happen?
5. A New Nemesis
Now a superhero film wouldn’t be complete without a villain or antagonist, and in Iron Man’s case a lot of them have been covered already. We’ve had (in order): Iron Monger, Justin Hammer, Whiplash, The Mandarin, and Ultron. So who’s missing? I’d personally like to see M.O.D.O.K in a Marvel film. Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing is a super intelligent, super megalomaniacal giant head in a floating chair with psionic and mind-control abilities he uses to his disposal in his eternal quest for world domination, and that’s just putting it simply. He is the product of a man-machine mutation that occurred when A.I.M scientists (Advanced Idea Mechanics, like from Iron Man 3) attempted to study their equivalent of the Tesseract. He quickly grew powerful enough to take over A.I.M and has had numerous team-ups with other villains ever since.
I think a character like M.O.D.O.K would be a great antagonist for a fourth Iron Man film simply because it could tie up loose ends/continue storylines from previous films as well as introducing new threats. In this universe M.O.D.O.K could be a not-so-dead Aldrich Killian who is secretly working with Thanos to obtain the last of the infinity stones. There would be plenty of opportunities for Iron Man to go ego to ego or tête-à-(giant)tête in tense intellectual warfare in a Holmes vs Moriarty fashion.
4. Don’t Say “New York”
Remember when there was a portal in the sky and aliens came flooding through it? Remember when Iron Man put a missile through said portal, and almost never returned? Remember when Tony was having bad dreams and panic attacks? Yeah, so do I. But somehow that is all resolved by the end of Iron Man 3? We barely see any symptoms of PTSD after that and I find it a little strange. I know everyone deals with trauma and stress in different ways but we don’t even see any steps towards recovery so it appears that he’s completely fine. It’s either that or Tony’s become good at hiding it from other people.
I’m not saying dedicate a whole film around his recovery but it would be good to physically show to the audience what he’s going through in that respect. It would give his character more depth (not that it lacks) and would affect the decisions he would make. It could change the way a situation pans out and have a knock-on effect on future events. It could. It’s only speculation now because it’s not really been addressed in its entirety. It may have been a factor in the decision to create Ultron but we don’t know. And if so, then that was a little too subtle. Give us something more concrete, dammit!