Also known as a “Brass Rat”. As it happens, I’ve known and/or worked with a number of MIT grads. They were all bright people, certainly, and generally speaking good engineers/physicsts/chemists, but none of them were off-the-charts brilliant; that’s reserved for Caltech students. I kid, I kid. Actually, the smartest, most broadly knowledgeable, knock-it-out-of-the-ballpark brilliant person I’ve known professionally was a Harvey Mudd and Cornell graduate, as much as it pains me to admit that.
Tony Stark lives in a universe where Norse gods destroy small New Mexico towns and Oxford colleges, a radiation accident turns a physicist into a giant green rage monster, Paul Rudd can shrink to the size of an insect but still be unnervingly charming, and the dopey guy from Parks and Rec is actually a galaxy-wide lothario who defeats the big bad in a dance-off. Jeremy Renner is running around with a bow and arrow, none of this makes any sense. My question is how Captain America can destroy an elevator full of S.T.R.I.K.E. team thugs and then leap twenty-odd stories to the warm comfort of a concrete pad, but has trouble defeating one French Algerian mercenary in hand to hand combat? Never mind the guy’s Muay Thai skills; can’t Cap just chest punch Batroc’s heart through his back and move on to completing the mission? It isn’t like he didn’t just take out (i.e. kill or permanently maim) an even dozen mercs who were supposed to be holding the ship.
Stranger