Psychology of a Hero: TONY STARK (part 2/2)

[Music] previously on psychology of a hero tony stark he absolutely qualifies for narcissistic personality disorder what are you genius billionaire playboy philanthropist ptsd occurs when you think your world is safe and then you realize that it's not now tony knows that his world isn't safe but he also thinks that he's not ever really in danger the world is safe for him yeah because he can just build a suit now suddenly we're dealing with aliens we're dealing with wormholes we're dealing with nukes i've got a friend who's a god that challenges my whole idea that i'm the most powerful you know and and suddenly my world doesn't feel safe anymore right at the end of iron man 3 tony's in a really good place he's really solid he's successfully managed his guilt he successfully managed his trauma and now he's really just iron man because the avengers need him but he doesn't need to be iron man right and so he's fine until wanda puts that vision in his head and he sees everybody laying there dead and dying you could have saved us and it brings everything right back everything right back and now the thrilling conclusion of psychology of a hero tony stark only on cinema therapy so what does he do like screenplay wise what does tony do we talk about an age of ultron he reverts to the mean which is not full-blown narcissism but like i got to put a suit of armor around the planet yeah and he you know enlists bruce banner's help so it's not exactly like he was before yeah but the banner is really the only one he trusts right like he'll trust everybody else on a mission kicking ass sure but when it comes to like actually strategy he's not gonna go talk to cap or hawkeye about like hey help me build a yeah a super technological thing that's going to protect the entire planet the city is flying we're fighting an army of robots and i have a bow and arrow none of this makes sense and and this is this is his arrogance still even with all his goodness in his virtue i'm the smartest man in the room i'll let banner play with me because he's pretty damn smart too but i'm this one i'm the one who needs to make the call of how to do this well and that's even set up in a joke in age of ultron where you know everybody's trying to pick up thor's hammer and nobody can do it except we later learn cap right but uh everybody's trying to do it and so what is what does tony do he doesn't try to pick it up be right back he puts on the suit cause he's like i'm gonna cheat this yeah i'm gonna figure out a way around it and then i love i love that it cuts to him and and war machine together like just represent paul all right let's go just represent represent oh man i have a lot of issues with joss whedon as a person but his writing is it is it's great chef's kiss it's the best writing that is in film yeah it's fantastic so of course that backfires his creation takes over the world or tries to and causes a lot of death and destruction yeah plot hole that i see that doesn't bother me too bad because i i want to just enjoy the show tony should be in prison at the end of age of ultron who sent you i see a suit of armor around the world oh yeah like i don't know how he's not except well he's really he's rich powerful and white so yeah rich rich white men in america don't go to prison yeah so maybe that's not a plot hole maybe that's social commentary whoa so instead of going to prison we get to civil war and civil war is another one we're not going to go super in depth on because right there's a whole episode just in the civil war man there's so much we're gonna we're gonna just live in the mcu for a while guys you enjoy it here but tony's back in his guilt and now he's giving away grants to like hundreds of college students or graduate students for their research i do what i do like about tony's arc is what happens in the age of ultron finally breaks him completely breaks him of his egotism yeah by the time we get to civil war his ego is completely stripped yeah peppers left him he completely effed up with his plan to put a suit of armor around the world yep who's going to avenge my son stark he's dead and i blame you and what he says is okay i am really smart and i am really good in battle but i can't be the one making the calls anymore yeah and that is huge for him and that and i think often gets overlooked that's because of age of ultron and he and he says i want to give basically the keys to me to somebody else oh that's charles spencer by the way he's a great kid he wanted to make a difference i suppose i mean we won't know because we dropped the building on them while we were kicking ass well and the thing that i love this is this is a magic trick that the marvel cinematic universe pulled that ferguson mcfeely and the russo brothers pulled on everybody is by the time you get to civil war there are two opposing the civil war is two opposing sides right one is we need to be reigned in we need to be governed by the sokovia accords and the other is we need to be completely independent and able to do whatever we want yeah and on one side is cap and on one side is tony and it is the opposite of anything you would expect from when it starts perfect sense yeah they they absolutely set the table and then knock everything over and it all works yeah and it is the exact opposite of the tony that we meet the truth is i am iron man and the steve rogers that we made at the beginning that is genius and the events of age of ultron switch tony to where he's like someone's got to govern me because i'm out of control and the inventions of winter soldier winter soldier completely invert caps world view steve rogers world view and it's we end up in this brilliant place where they're on the opposite sides of the issue from where you would expect it makes perfect sense yeah and oh man it's so it's like guys the screenwriting in the marvel cinematic universe like people rag on it like these are popular movies they're extremely popular movies and anything popular will always be frowned on by like film critics the intelligentsia but there are film snobs there are film snobs who are like everything's popular it can't be good this is ingenious this is incredible writing yeah because it all works and makes sense and is it like it is intuitively correct for the characters why are the marvel movies successful it's not because they're about superheroes you make movies about superheroes a certain percentage of the population shows up because they're super into comic books and superheroes yeah they'll come why is the mcu so successful because they're character driven and because they're really well acted and really well written and people who aren't even into superheroes are super into marvel yeah and now they're interesting the smashy smashy is good [Music] smashy punchy punchy let's go sleep go to sleep go to sleep going back to tony's guilt a lot of us manage our guilt this way where we screw up enough or at least we perceive ourselves as screwing up enough and we're like i can't be trusted with my own decisions right yeah and we often latch on to somebody else it could be a romantic partner it could be a parent it could be a friend it could be a therapist it's even a therapist and was like please take the keys and just tell me what to do yeah i am not trusted to drive yeah and tony's like i'm not trusted i can't be trusted to drive and with this new guild comes new trauma he loses his friends the avengers are torn apart he witnesses his own parents murder yeah and now tony who at the end of iron man 3 was in a really good place with both guilt and trauma his neck deep in both of them once again yep he tries to manage it by mentoring he tries he mentors he's like i'm going to have someone learn from my mistakes and be a better hero than i was i just wanted to be like you and i wanted you to be better in giving him the iron spider suit it's it's obvious that he wants to right the wrongs of the past by finding this really smart kid who also has just innate superpowers and then give him an iron man suit yeah he's like i'm gonna i'm gonna make a better iron man yeah and i'm gonna step he's better than me which i loved by the way watching in homecoming that you have peter parker and he's got like his own it's not jarvis what's the is it karen yeah i remember watching it because i'm like oh that didn't age well that's right you can call me karen if you would like but he's got a karen in his brain and i love peter parker like dealing with like what like all the iron man stuff activating instant kill no no no no no no no no no no no no i don't want to kill anybody deactivating instant kill he is limping along but he's doing the best he can with mentorship and he's doing the best he can by he's really hunkering down committing to pepper they're going to get married you know and he's tony's in a place that a lot of people are where they have trauma where they have grief where they just kind of bury it really deep right and they become functional and you know with his mentorship of peter and with his his relationship with pepper he's kind of in a good place at the beginning of infinity war but a lot of it is just deep inside of him right and then he suffers probably the biggest blow of all which is this i don't feel so good you're all right i don't i don't know what's happening i don't know okay i don't want to go you don't want to go please [Music] smart oh geez man you had to show that one he had to show that one he kills it tell me about the acting both of tom holland and rdj in that well uh you know fun filmmaking fact that was that was improvised by tom holland on the day yeah um and he you know he went up to the directors and said hey look i think because i'm spider-man i have you know my inherent spider strength and stuff i should hold on longer and i should really you know be afraid yeah because i realize what's happening and i'm i'm holding on i have spider strength but i'm also just a scared kid yeah and and so and that performance is um one of the most affecting performances in a in a i mean think of a modern blockbuster you know big mega film and find me a more weepy scene than that and i mean it's it's iron man's funeral in but other than before that before that like if if you ever wanted to be in a room of a thousand people just just weeping openly in your face titanic i'll never let go i promise if you're enjoying this we've got commercials free directors cut extended editions of all of our episodes on our low-cost membership site as well as relationship courses that we have created just for you growth guides so you can actually have application steps from a licensed therapist for the movies that you watch live watch parties with the two of us q and a's with you where you can ask therapy related questions all sorts of sweet buttery goodness yeah it's like kettle corn which you can get from lisa's passion for popcorn okay i'm done all right hey all right good job guys let's just not come in tomorrow let's just take a date seriously like i mean everyone else is is dusted and they're turning to us and we're like in the audience you're feeling it with each one but then when you close on peter and he and he's so scared to die he gives he gives it so much emotional weight because it's it's been up until this point it's been a science fiction scary thing yeah and then he brings home the just hammer blow of like no this is what everyone's losing and so here's tony after all that has happened across all the courses of the films he has tried to be strong he has tried to hold hold the line be the hero correct his mistakes and he's come close to breaking several times but never quite broke and came back stronger than ever and learned his lessons and this finally yeah he's broken well and at the beginning of end game he comes back and he is broken yeah completely there's just nothing left tired old mules i got nothing for you cap i got no coordinates no clues no strategies no options zero zip nada no trust fire and this is where tony effectively retires he just hangs it up and five years later he's married pepper and he's done what a lot of us would do which is this isn't worth it anymore and i'm talking about whatever whatever is hurting us whatever cause that we have attached ourselves to i know a lot of people who who fight for the rights of a certain group or they fight for this or they fight for that and they get in the fray and they get hammered enough that at a certain point they're like you hang it up and you move to a cabin and yeah but what's beautiful is he's achieved some peace you thinking about much and i love we see from 20 plus films ago got a family yes and i will see them when i leave here and you start where tony lands is where ianson pointed him yeah so you're a man who has everything and nothing that his happiness is going to be with a family that'd be tons i love you 3000. and here come the crew and they've got this time travel plan for their time heist time heist yeah time heist we're doing a time heist yeah and they're like tony tony's probably gonna be in he might need a little convincing because there's bad blood between him and cap but we got a plan and i'll bet tony wants to undo all this just as much as we do and tony's like nope he's like first of all it can't be done right but second of all he's scared to try yeah and he says he's like i can't do he's like and cap says we have a second chance and tony said my second chance right here again camera with dice on it and so here's tony and he figures out time travel he can make the plan work but he's finally content and he's never truly been content like he's he's pursued pleasure and he's and he's had thrills but he's never been content and is he going to risk it all and he has this exchange with pepper that's crazy go to bed or i'll sell all your toys that is exactly how i parent it in competition but she loves me three thousand oh does she know you were somewhere below six to nine hundred this is also exactly how i husband and uh there's actually truth to this i've seen this what's written this is the book on composting what's new with composting interesting i figured it out compost by the way and you know just so we're talking about the same thing time travel what i love that she's not quippy anymore yeah wow that's amazing and terrifying that's right we got really lucky yeah i know a lot of people didn't no and i can't help everybody [Music] and sort of seems like you can see it i can put a pin in it right now and stop tony trying to get you to stop has been one of the few failures of my entire life something tells me i should put it in a lock box and drop it to the bottom of the lake go to bed would you be able to rest wow a lot of people don't like gwyneth paltrow i love her as pepper potts she's fantastic she's great with rdj so good and you compare this moment to iron man one i think it's a fair example um i think it's incredibly overpriced i need it buy it store it and here is a mature healthy couple in a mature healthy relationship and they're stable you know like as a married couple they're stable and i love she gets tony you know and he gets hurt i mean he is he is obviously willing and i mean not just willing to sacrifice but yeah choosing to you know put her and their daughter first yeah he's choosing it but she knows this speaks to a very powerful couple's dynamic so in in civil war we learn that pepper has left tony because he was gonna stop being iron man and then he didn't stop being iron man right and then and then and then i never stopped because the truth is i don't want to stop i don't want to lose her i thought maybe the accords could split the difference he's grown to a point where he actually will stop that for her in her defense i'm a handful because she matters most right but like you're saying she's also come to this place of acceptance she says tony trying to get you to stop has been one of the few failures of my entire life but he pushes like i will drop it i will throw it in the lake and i'll go to bed and she says you won't be able to rest yeah she knows tony stark has a lot of flaws it's one of the reasons why we love him but from the moment he realizes that his weapons were doing harm all the way to the end his greatest virtue is trying to make things right and sometimes when you try to make things right you can you make them worse yeah you make them worse sometimes you make ultron oops so how does tony ultimately overcome guilt and trauma by letting go of his ego completely he's willing to listen to cap finally stark you've got the perimeter anything gets more than three blocks out you turn it back or you turn it to ash can you give me lift right better clench up legolas to listen to doctor strange to scott lang to natasha he accepts their influence which is a big deal accepting influence instead of trying to be the big man calling the shots and he lets them help him with his guilt he does everything he can do to make it right and then he lets go of it right it's not going to consume him with this trauma he embraces his mortality instead of running from it or hiding from it so he stops i mean i see it as he stops allowing his fear of death to overcome him yeah he embraces you know that death is part of life yeah i am inevitable [Music] i mean i see it since the first film he's been trying to do what's right but he's done so all trying to be invincible and vulnerable the best and when he triumphs is when he drops all of that except just doing the right thing there's no ego there's no arrogance there's just courage and the confidence that comes from right action and i iron man i agree and i am inevitable and i am iron man and watch movies i i don't want to go i don't want to go mr decker i don't want to go you can rest now

Channel: Cinema Therapy

Views: 76,646

Rating: 4.9839268 out of 5

Keywords: cinematherapy, cinema therapy, mental health, counseling, therapy, mental health therapy, Jonathan Decker, Alan Seawright, Iron Man, Tony Stark, Marvel, MCU, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Holland, PTSD

Id: PALQhiCo6hg

Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021