This was a point of confusion for my roommate. Best guess is that as soon as Pepper hit the button she ran like hell, either outside or into a safe room. It wouldn’t be implausible for a reactor like that to have one nearby, I should think.
Also, there’s a deleted scene on the DVD that has both Stark and Stane alive after the blast, with one last villainous monologue from Stane before he fell into the middle of the reactor. So it may have been that the blast just knocked him out, he fell forward, and only died when he crashed into the reactor.
I do think it was odd that the blast should have been so nonlethal, given how Pepper was freaking out and Stark expected it to annihilate the roof. Isn’t his math never wrong? He should have been vaporized, being directly over it, rather than merely knocked aside.
Nick Fury is the one thing in the entire movie that has anything to do with the Ultimate Universe.
Movie Iron Man is wildly different from Ultimate Iron Man (who has a completely bizarre origin and a brain tumor rather than a heart condition); he is based on the 616 Marvel Universe version.
Here’s the thing about the ‘secret identity reveal’: it’s a display of Tony’s bravado, yes, but it also helps illustrate how alone he is. Spider-Man has a secret identity because he has loved ones who would be in danger if his enemies knew who he was. But Tony Stark doesn’t have a normal life to protect. He spends more time with robots and computers than he does with human beings. His only two flesh-and-blood friends are Rhodey and Pepper, who he pays to hang around him. Tony’s so isolated that revealing his secret identity puts almost no one in danger.
As for Tony Stark’s bodycount, let’s see, there’s:
Titanium Man II from Armor Wars.
Malin from Extremis.
It seems like there’s gotta be a least a couple more.
He did NOT kill Blizzard I (Gregor Shapanka) however – that was Iron Man 2020. Iron Monger (Obadiah Stane) in the comics suicided. Blacklash was beaten to death by the Sentient Armor.
I have to agree. In addition to what you said, it’s just his personality to be blunt and brazen. He doesn’t mess around–he says exactly what he means and doesn’t beat around the bush. And he was pretty obviously bursting to tell people. I’m not sure he could have kept it a secret if he wanted to.
Sure, he could have just gone along with SHIELD, but when did he ever do something besides what he himself wanted?
I don’t think movie-Tony is quite that brazen, at least not at the end. Early-movie Stark might have done kept his id secret for the fun of proving that he was the smartest; he’d have treated it as a game. But by the end of the movie he’d seen graphically that his life wasn’t a game. He’d have kept the secret if it were both the responsible and intelligent move; but between Pepper cutting him down as she tied his tie, and the convenience of the rushed press conference, he figured out that going for cover story was neither ethical nor smart.
I just watched it on Tuesday, and I could swear she was standing outside in the street when all the glass blew out… into the street, so okay, that probably wasn’t a good place to stop. And, being one of the few people to have learned the superhero’s secret identity is a dangerous place to be at the end of the movie.
I has a question: In the convoy attack scene at the beginning of the movie, the guy who wanted a picture jumped out, slammed the door, yelled “STAY HERE!”, turned around, and a great many holes got punched simultaneously through him and the side of the hummvee, which made for a great shot, but I’m wondering, is there a weapon that actually does that? Would a frag grenade do that, or a claymore loaded with buckshot, without knocking the vehicle on its side, or were we looking at pure Hollywood there?
I adored the movie. The only moment that pulled me out of it was when they showed Pepper running like hell across the floor, which was a grate. Just a few moments earlier, when they showed her outside, she had been wearing high heels with thin heels on them, by far thin enough that there is no way EVER she could run across that floor and not break something.
They could have at least laid down rubber mats… those wouldn’t be all that out of place in a room with a lot of (what I assume is) electricity from the reactor.
Ah, another thought that occurred to me about the wisdom of trying to maintain a secret identity: it’s a little hard to explain the glowing reactor in your chest to your latest paramour if you’re not Ironman. He’d have to cut way back on one night stands with reporters…
You know one of the very very few things that bothered me about that movie? Why did he suddenly have holes cut in most of his t-shirts for the reactor? I mean, I know I saw at least one where it was only outlined, but the rest it definitely was a hole in the shirt.
Why?
Once he got seriously into the development of the MK2 suit, he needed to have access to the reactor to power whatever he was testing. When he first got back, and when he was going out in public, he had shirts that covered it.
What I wanna know is how did Obie know how to make the exact gadget to cut through the shirt and extract the reactor?
Humvees aren’t armored, generally. It wouldn’t take some super-powerful weapon to punch holes in the side… and whatever goes through the door also usually goes through the guy sitting next to it…