We Create Our Own Demons

            (The character/storyline I will be referencing is strictly from the Marvel Cinematic Universe/MCU. A sincere and heartfelt apology to all you comic fans.) 

I've always loved heroes. Like most other American-raised book nerds, I grew up eating, sleeping, and breathing hero narratives, living my life alongside figures like Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker. I adored them all in their somewhat naive sense of adventure and courage and goodness - they were just so easy to like! Who wouldn't want to be the Chosen One in magical worlds' prophecies and triumph over evil villains through exciting action sequences?

            It was exactly this good-over-bad narrative that lost me. These textbook heroes, while still interesting, started losing their personal allure for me around 4th grade. I had a creeping feeling that the real world wasn't really split into the good-bad, light-dark idea that my childhood narratives wanted it to be. While I knew even then that pure-hearted Frodo and Chosen-One Percy Jackson would always hold places in my heart, reading through their perspectives felt a bit like wearing clothes that didn't quite fit anymore. The reality of my life wasn’t the fight against one big bad dark side; nothing in my world was so easily defined. Their righteous character and worldview just felt so lacking. 

It was around this age that I watched Iron Man for the first time. While my real love for Tony Stark didn't start until later on in his arc, his first film was still a breath of fresh air compared to the now-stifling paths of the same old, same old hero narrative that I had grown up with. My childhood favorites had all seen the world through a certain special-snowflake, defeat-the-darkside point of view, one where there was always an easily definable ultimate villain (Sauron, Voldemort, etc.). It was in this crucial hero detail that Tony Stark felt different to me. Due to the structure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (ever-developing and changing, with little continuity outside of characters and universe), most Marvel heroes don’t have one set villain or “dark side” to conquer. Rather, they operate within a carousel of opponents, made up of both traditional villains and fellow heroes. (For example, Iron Man fights Captain America, arguably the quintessential MCU hero, in Captain America: Civil War.) As such, Marvel storylines have much more room to explore the nuances between “good” and “evil”, therefore pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a hero (as they did with Iron Man). This idea was revolutionary for almost-middle-school me - where, then, was the dark side? Who was Iron Man's ultimate villain? 

            In Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, each hero is haunted by "shadows", by “potential for evil", which typically manifests as the villain and the ordeal that the hero must overcome. However, because of Marvel’s villain-of-the-day structure, some characters end up being nearly invincible and therefore untethered to crucial aspects of reality. Unthwarted by any real shadows, these heroes grow into extensions of near-perfection and absolute righteousness, becoming almost godlike in their undefeated goodness. In contrast, Tony Stark is utterly, crushingly human. His ultimate opponent is, in fact, himself. This idea is best characterized by his auditory epigraph at the beginning of Iron Man 3 - "we create our own demons". The persevering struggles in Tony’s life (the shadows, per se), come from within him. The easiest inner villain to define is likely his alcoholism, which leads to his Iron Man suits and powers being confiscated by the government in Iron Man 2. He also suffers from crippling PTSD in Iron Man 3, which takes place in the aftermath of the events of The Avengers (in which Tony nearly dies by sacrificing himself for New York). (Crucially, he is the first hero in the MCU to be portrayed with any sort of debilitating mental illness.) Even his more material threats are of his own creation – his arc reactor (which powers his Iron Man suit and keeps shrapnel from his heart) poisons him to near-death in Iron Man 2; he creates Ultron (an AI gone genocidal who is the main villain in the second Avengers movie); et cetera, et cetera. Tony's entire villain arc is just one big manifestation of his “dark side” - his evil was always inside of him. He's also nowhere near "pure-hearted", being somewhat egotistical, very snarky, and frankly just an asshole. I loved him anyway. 

            Tony Stark just felt so realistic to me after a childhood full of wholly righteous heroes. His mortal and human fallibility better illustrated the reality of my universe, one where there were no superheroes, no easy accessible worlds-through-wardrobes in need of saving (no matter how much I may wish it were so). Most importantly, there were no true worldly villains, no Saurons and no dark sides to defeat and conquer. As such, Iron Man's hero's journey was far closer to my own story than Harry Potter's, even in its wacky sci-fi/action frame. Here was a hero I could truly relate to in having nasty faults and inner demons, which he sometimes even gave into (as all humans do). He demonstrated to me the reality that had just barely been starting to dawn upon me - that the world was not split into black and white, good and bad, or even hero and villain. His blurry gray narrative was the ultimate manifestation of the internal shadow, the true but ultimately human evil that he did not necessarily always overcome. Tony Stark was my own ultimate fictional proof of the internal ambiguity within humanity (and therefore myself). True heroes were not simply the light against the dark; they had shadows and faults deep inside of them, as a side effect of being human. In this way, his character and hero's journey provided some hope and inspiration for my own journey - both hero and villain could lurk inside of me.