'Iron Man 2' and Tom Morello's Love/Hate Relationship with Machinery

As I watched Iron Man 2 in preparation for Avengers: Age of Ultron I realized that one of the easiest decisions made in the production of this and the first Iron Man movie was probably to use a lot of loud rock music, specifically of the "metal" variety.  Not only is it an obvious yet unavoidable pun, but the hero's name is the same as a Black Sabbath classic.  Sabbath's "Iron Man" is included in the first movie, along with music by AC/DC and Suicidal Tendencies.  AC/DC even returned to make up the entirety of the second movie's official soundtrack.  As if that weren't enough, both movies' original scores featured Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.

Maybe the pun could have been avoided,
but dear God at what cost?

Fortunately, the Iron Man franchise has one of the most important qualities Morello looks for when he works on a film: a lot of machinery.  He has worked on six different film's scores, all of them involving sci-fi technology, automobiles, or both.  First there was XXX: State of The Union, the spy movie sequel that replaced Vin Diesel with Ice Cube and replaced extreme sports with muscle cars.  Next, Morello worked on Talladega Nights, a comedy about a NASCAR driver.  After that there was the two Iron Man movies, then Battleship, a movie about aliens in high tech Transformers Halloween costumes fighting people in boats.  Finally, in 2013 Tom Morello worked on the movie of his dreams: Pacific Rim.  This is the movie Morello was born to play guitar on.  I'm being completely serious when I say that Pacific Rim is one of my favorite movies of the past few years and Morello's work on the score is a big part of that.  His crunchy guitar riffs go perfectly with the giant robots in the battle against giant monsters.  Still, all of this raises the question "why does Morello want to rage against a machine when he loves them so much?"  The answer is "the machine is obviously a metaphor and I think you know that."

Still, the idea of a man fighting against a machine while profiting from it or another one like it is actually a pretty good analogy for Iron Man himself, Tony Stark.  The music in the soundtrack seems to echo Stark's own taste.  For at least the first two Iron Man movies and The Avengers he is shown listening to metal and punk music, both of which typically encourage the dismantling of the established power structure.  All the while Stark remains a very rich man who spends his free time playing hero in the world's most upscale and form fitting tank, so he's not exactly lacking in power.

Stark also spends much of Iron Man 2 trying to keep his suit out of the hands of the government.  The very same government that bought untold amounts of weapons from Tony and his father.  Iron Man literally could not exist if not for the Stark family's various weapons contracts with the United States.  It's worth noting that the senator leading the charge against Stark was secretly a member of the evil organization Hydra, but no one knew that at the time.  More importantly, Stark's biting of the hand that fed him is better justified by the events of the first movie.  The entire series was set in motion when Stark was attacked and kidnapped by a terrorist organization who tried to force him to make weapons.  After his escape Tony swore off weapon manufacturing in favor of his own super-heroic pursuits.

2014's Captain America: Winter Soldier has gotten a lot of well deserved praise for its social relevance, but I've been fascinated by Iron Man's politics since I read this Cracked article fron 2011 comparing Iron Man 2 to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.  Rand was famously anti-establishment but Tony Stark's beliefs aren't so simple.  Not only is he willing to work with the shady government organization S.H.I.E.L.D. but it seems that by next year he wall fall squarely in favor of government regulation.  The 2016 movie Captain America: Civil War will be based on the 2006 comic book event Civil War.  In it, all of the superheroes fight over the Superhuman Registration Act, which is exactly what it sounds like.  Iron Man leads the pro-registration side and Captain America leads the anti-registration side.  There is every indication that the movie adaptation will feature the same dynamic, which means that between Iron Man 2 and Civil War Tony Stark will have radically changed his feelings about the government and transformed from libertarian folk hero to J. Edgar Hoover.

Tony Stark's connection to politics goes all the way back to his conception in 1963.  Stan Lee has said that he created him as a writing challenge to make the young liberal readers of the time fall for a capitalist war profiteer.  And it worked.  For over 50 years.  I guess all of this just means that even fictional politics are confusing and complicated and I don't know what I'm going to do without Jon Stewart to help me make sense of the real stuff.  I know two things for certain though; Pacific Rim is a great movie and Tom Morello is really good at making giant robots sound just as cool as they look.

Previously:

Iron Man

The Incredible Hulk