Marvel Did anyone else like the old Iron Man suits better?

The Original Sixth

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I mean the new nanotech suits are cool, but I think nothing can beat the old mechanical nature of those oldee suits with the cool suit up scenea that went with them. And the old suits also felt a lot more realistic and believable as well which was a huge boost to them.

I like the first suit up style and the suit-case one. The later ones, where they literally flew around on mini thrusters was kinda...well, dumb looking.
 

GoldRanger

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Yep. I imagined these tiny fuel tanks and independent power supplies and the thrusters themselves, and mini-computers and sensors to coordinate the movement and identify Tony, attached to almost literally every centimeter of the suit, and... my suspension of disbelief itself developed tiny thrusters and flew away.
 

The Original Sixth

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Yep. I imagined these tiny fuel tanks and independent power supplies and the thrusters themselves, and mini-computers and sensors to coordinate the movement and identify Tony, attached to almost literally every centimeter of the suit, and... my suspension of disbelief itself developed tiny thrusters and flew away.

It would have been more realistic if he'd just grabbed a morpher.
 

Big Steve

For the Republic!
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I dunno, I kinda like the nanotech too. Really I like almost all of them.

Actually the only thing I didn't like about the nanotech was I'd planned on using a similar thing in a story (people with combat nanites in their bodies that end up able to use them to form combat armor) and was afraid people would think I was ripping off Infinity War. :p
 

The Original Sixth

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I dunno, I kinda like the nanotech too. Really I like almost all of them.

Actually the only thing I didn't like about the nanotech was I'd planned on using a similar thing in a story (people with combat nanites in their bodies that end up able to use them to form combat armor) and was afraid people would think I was ripping off Infinity War. :p

Nah, nanite outfits have been a thing before.
 

Battlegrinder

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Obozny
I think it's less that the later suits were silly, and more that they create some world building and writing issues.

The mk 3 was implausible, but it was at its core understandable. It had lots of really powerful servos, armor plating, missiles, etc, stuff that even if it doesn't exist IRL, possibly could. The only crazy stuff were the repulsors and the reactor, and in iron man 2 he said those were only about ten years ahead of the rest of the world. Ok, fine. I can buy that.

The issue with IW is that it takes the Homecoming Vulture vs FBI scene and makes it even worse. If you'll recall , the Vulture had a super tech flying suit and a ray gun powered by alien technology. The feds had glocks. That scene pretty well underscored the MCU's big issue, that at its core it's still just the regular old real world with comic box stuff stapled onto it, and those two sides don't interact. So Tony is running around with nanomachines and super tech bullshit, the rest of the world is just modern earth, and those things don't fit.

The other issue I have is that now that Tony can just literally pull weapons and gear out of his ass, it removes a lot of his limits and let's the writers just do whatever with him, instead of having him actually work to overcome his enemies by using what he has intelligently (like he did in the first three movies). Early iron man had to worry about ammunition, had to make design tradeoffs to fit the weapons he wanted in his suit, had to make sacrifices if he wanted some highly specialized gizmo, had to be clever when fighting someone who was resistant to his normal weapons. And then in later films he's just going "huh, Thanos can only use the infinity gauntlet if he makes a fist, time to use my new infinity-glove-restraint-anti-fist-closing-inator and stop him from using it".
 

The Original Sixth

Well-known member
Founder
I think it's less that the later suits were silly, and more that they create some world building and writing issues.

The mk 3 was implausible, but it was at its core understandable. It had lots of really powerful servos, armor plating, missiles, etc, stuff that even if it doesn't exist IRL, possibly could. The only crazy stuff were the repulsors and the reactor, and in iron man 2 he said those were only about ten years ahead of the rest of the world. Ok, fine. I can buy that.

The issue with IW is that it takes the Homecoming Vulture vs FBI scene and makes it even worse. If you'll recall , the Vulture had a super tech flying suit and a ray gun powered by alien technology. The feds had glocks. That scene pretty well underscored the MCU's big issue, that at its core it's still just the regular old real world with comic box stuff stapled onto it, and those two sides don't interact. So Tony is running around with nanomachines and super tech bullshit, the rest of the world is just modern earth, and those things don't fit.

The other issue I have is that now that Tony can just literally pull weapons and gear out of his ass, it removes a lot of his limits and let's the writers just do whatever with him, instead of having him actually work to overcome his enemies by using what he has intelligently (like he did in the first three movies). Early iron man had to worry about ammunition, had to make design tradeoffs to fit the weapons he wanted in his suit, had to make sacrifices if he wanted some highly specialized gizmo, had to be clever when fighting someone who was resistant to his normal weapons. And then in later films he's just going "huh, Thanos can only use the infinity gauntlet if he makes a fist, time to use my new infinity-glove-restraint-anti-fist-closing-inator and stop him from using it".

Yeah, in the first two films, he was at the "star trek" believable scale. In that the technology he was using was clearly bullshit, but it had limits and some rationality to it. The real issue for me though, was that they left behind the coolest part of the character with the nanotech, which was that Tony needed the suit to be combat dangerous. Without the suit, he became 'just some guy with a high IQ'. Without that armor, he was vulnerable.

I think part of the mistake was his identity being disclosed so early. If he had kept his identity longer, it would have been harder for the tech to appear as if it should have gone viral. In the second film, we saw that other powers like China were working hard on making more and then some crazy convict guy does it on his own, with the resources presented to him in a lab by a rival company. And at some point, Stark has like, fifty of these things flying around, including one that was stolen by a member of the US Military.

Limited gear also needs to be brought forward for story telling. I see it a mistake in some Jet Fighter games where you have essentially infinite ammo, with a short recharge. Really, you should let me fly an F-22 with limited ammo capacity and make me judge what my loadout is--then make me work with that loadout.
 

Husky_Khan

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Sotnik
I mean the new nanotech suits are cool, but I think nothing can beat the old mechanical nature of those oldee suits with the cool suit up scenea that went with them. And the old suits also felt a lot more realistic and believable as well which was a huge boost to them.

The Spiderman: Far From Home movie really seemed to double down on it as well, with being able to build a suit on a Stark jet in a few hours time and construct it like a piece of nanoweave pottery or the like.

With Iron-Man no longer around (may he rest in peace) I will say that while all of the suits are cool, the earlier ones are quite good because it did feel more 'mechanical' and there was a bit of a vulnerability in the whole thing as well. I loved the Mark I (both iterations) which was just so cool and mechanical and menacing like some sort of Dieselpunk mech) and the Mark III was great. I liked that he had to put it on piece by piece or need a special mounting/removal system (even if it got kind of sketch with what happened in Avengers) and yeah, thematically and visually, actual pieces feels better to me then nanotech or the individually propelled pieces slamming onto you.

IronMan 3 kind of felt like it was poking fun at the franchise with how the story focused a lot on Tony Stark independent of his suit (ie if he's more then the suit) by removing his crazy arsenal for much of the film to the point Helicopter Technicals were a threat to him or how he was still good enough to use his garage tech and own skills to break into the enemy mansion. While the later suits just weren't as cool, I did like the modular designs and endless variants (and was kinda sad to see them all explode).

Honestly an early Mark style suit with countless modifications sounds like it'd be an awesome way to go so you can have your Hulkbuster suit or Underwater suit and so on and so forth with various attachments and specializations. But now that you can literally spin out nanosuits, it does take some of the Ironpunk out of IronMan which makes him kind of special.

Friday is just as cool as Jarvis tho...
 

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