Wounding, Morality, and Torture: Reflections of the War on Terror in Iron Man and Iron Man 2

Abstract

The Iron Man films are one of a series of Marvel Comics adaptations that include Spiderman, Hulk (Lee, 2003), X-Men (Singer, 2000), and Marvel’s The Avengers (Whedon, 2012), along with their respective sequels. The first Iron Man film (Favreau, 2008), which tells the story of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Junior), a wealthy industrial entrepreneur and weapons designer, performed well at box office, having the third-highest grossing opening weekend of 2008 behind Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull and The Dark Knight, and the twenty-third highest opening weekend of all time.¹ Its sequel was released in 2010 with a third planned for 2013, and the character of Iron Man also features in Marvel’s The Avengers, which currently ranks third in all-time worldwide grossing box office as of July 2012.² Iron Man achieved critical acclaim as well as commercial success, whereas Iron Man 2 (Favreau, 2010) outperformed the first film, becoming the fourth-highest grossing film of 2010, and fifth in the highest grossing weekends of all time.³ It currently ranks at position sixty-three in all-time highest grossing worldwide box office.