While Iron Man 2 may be considered the black sheep of the Iron Man trilogy, it truly stands out to me. After Tony Stark “privatized” world peace in the first movie, the sequel shows his power diminishing as the government gains control and matches his influence. With his health deteriorating and everything going downhill, Tony faces the daunting task of creating a new element—not just to save himself through his arc reactor, but to enhance its power without causing self-harm. This pattern of falling before rising is present throughout the Iron Man films, an aspect that captivates me both as a viewer and a fan.
There is no need to second guess to what needs to happen. Tony needs to lock in. In the movie Tony spends countless hours working, visiting old work, reconfiguring and deeply understanding some of his father’s old work. To create a solid future, Tony needs some old work, complete or not, trying to get to the depths of all this work, establishing adequate connections where needed until his goal is met or exceeded.
My most cherished detail when Tony is working is him playing his father’s old recordings in the background. If you are familiar with the Iron Man story, you are aware of the dynamic between Howard and Tony’s not-so-great relationship. Tony always felt his father was never truly present and perhaps might’ve found him an annoying son. In the recordings, Tony’s presence always seemed distracting and every now and again, Tony got shushed away. Tony continued his father’s work anyway and this revisiting of his work seemed to somewhat show he needed it, as if there was some treasure to find in the archives.
The way Tony’s past spoke to him was as if the two never knew each other. Howard was pitching this idea of a city of the future.
“I’m Howard Stark and everything you’ll need for the future can be found right here…” mundane words in the movie, but a statement that holds extra significance when thinking about envisioning the future and everything we put in ourselves to be deserving of priceless achievements.
Our dreams, actions and interactions made us who we are today. They’re the tides that power us into being.
We are filled with gratitude for what we took action on. The right choices give us pride. Our triumphs gift us strength to do more even when we thought we never could. The dark cloud is our defeats and how we handled them. The misfortunes are a loud bang in a quiet room. You can’t help but notice. That doesn’t only make them attention dividers, they take most of it. Focusing on how we learn and sometimes grow is what’s most imperative to what looking at our past gives us.
Looking back gives a feeling of ‘touching the future’. Even in the present you can touch your future as there’s never a time we can truly afford or be worthy of the future. There’s only one day you commit to buy that one car, go to that gym, try that sport, apply for that job and start consuming based on that one diet, even when you’re not ready. Truth is being ready, affording and being worthy is sometimes so far that you have to touch that future to live it. Once you learn to maintain, you become the time of person you dream of being. Living your dreams might not be that difficult after all.
In our scene, the same scene where Howard touches the future, he disturbs it as well.
“Tony what are you doing back there, what is that! Put it back where you got it from.Where is your mother? Maria! Come on, go… go… go… go.” No doubt Tony felt his past never loved him. He had to face these interactions with his father frequently and remember them for quite some time. The most harmful part? The negative parts of the past haunted Tony more than the positive memories cheered and empowered him. We’re by no means different. Negative thoughts and memories trigger stronger responses in the brain. It’s easy to hate ourselves, environments and the world due to this negative bias. Never too late to change, especially now that we are aware of it. Just like in the recordings, Howard made mistakes, he goofed around a lot, but ultimately, he set up something amazing in Tony.
The past can be horrible. It can also be amazing. Its existence is a foundation, but its fruits must be picked wisely if we are to get the best out of it. The days we goofed around were fun, some mistakes were frustrating, the past hurt. However, we were set up for something beyond ourselves, even if we never felt truly involved in it. Our mission is to trust ourselves and tap in.
The point of this writing, trusting yourself and doing better for yourself is this; “Tony, you’re too young to understand this right now so I thought I’d put it on film for you.” The bit that caught Tony’s attention. The symphony in a loud bang. Right when Tony was done with the notes and was about to give up. Howard’s obsession with work built some resentment in Tony. Before leaving for holidays with Maria, Howard made ‘quick’ stops at the Pentagon. Makes you wonder how many ‘short’ work calls he also took instead of taking time off and being present for her. Tony was smart enough to keep building on his father’s work, although he made radical changes and had a different approach to the work. Just like us, he disregarded parts of his past he didn’t want himself to be a part of and continued with a similar identity, but a different outlook. Just like us, Tony changed. But the past had other plans, it had one last thing built for Tony. Howard says, “I’m limited by the technology of my time,” admitting, and opening up to trusting a little boy who was unaware of his capabilities at the time.
This one positive bit is the main focus. Our timelines can be so traumatic and we don’t want to be associated with anything inherited from them. It’s a double edged sword because we want credit when our future selves reach our goals. Killing off our past selves today gives our future selves incentive to kill us tomorrow. Trusting ourselves enough to know our past selves believed in something we have today enables us to trust our future selves to capably handle what we dream of achieving. That’s when we make leaps of faith. We start living the lives we’ve always wanted to because tomorrow we’ll be able to responsibly take good care of ourselves. We get clarity in blind spots. We’ve mostly had an idea on figuring ourselves out so why not dig deep enough to find the actions enabling us to handle it better. The blockers and enablers of our capabilities are us. The art of trying to be better is already being better.
Howard says, “one day you will figure this out, and when you do, you will change the world.” You will figure this out. The next level is looking back at our past selves and taking all lessons as investments.
If it’s not all balancing out right now, you have a future you to trust. Tenet taught me, everything we record now is a message for the future. Write, record, sketch and maybe film anything you need, just as a token of trust to your future self. Fun and easy? Mostly not at all, but be willing to do it. Help yourself enough to perpetually grow and change for the best.
When you look in the mirror, swap yourself out with your best version, then do everything in your capacity to hand over that version of you to tomorrow you, the person you trust enough to build on that canvas more and in better ways. Enable everyone you love to be a witness to a better you, just by trying.
“What is and always will be my greatest creation, is you,” the trust seal. This brings closure Tony’s way. He even thanked Howard in Endgame and left the ‘trust’ recording for Morgan, his daughter. The statement gave Tony the power he needed to create a new element. He’d be wrong not to. Just as we’d be wrong not to create new elements in ourselves that we trusted us to work on and trust our future to continue working on.
What is and always will be your greatest creation, is you.
Reference scene: Iron Man 2: Howard speaks to Tony
Tadiwa Vambe 
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