Can the Mar­vel fran­chise sur­vive with­out Iron Man?

One of the most antic­i­pat­ed films of 2017 sees a famil­iar char­ac­ter return to a whole new uni­verse. Tom Holland’s Peter Park­er made his Mar­vel debut in Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War, and takes cen­tre stage this year with Spi­der-man: Home­com­ing. Or does he? So far the trail­ers have hint­ed at a major con­tri­bu­tion from a cer­tain Tony Stark. The found­ing mem­ber of The Avengers is set to appear as men­tor to Spidey, teach­ing him the dos and don’ts of super­hero­ism. This dynam­ic has been inter­pret­ed by many as a pass­ing of the torch, which rais­es the ques­tion: can the mighty Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse sur­vive with­out Iron Man?

It’s been four years since the last solo Iron Man out­ing. In that time, Robert Downey Jr’s self-described ​“genius bil­lion­aire play­boy phil­an­thropist” has been keep­ing him­self busy in var­i­ous ensem­ble out­ings, fight­ing Ultron with his Avengers crew before turn­ing on one of his own in Civ­il War. But at the time of writ­ing, Downey Jr is not signed on to reprise his role beyond the two-part Avengers: Infin­i­ty War, lead­ing many to spec­u­la­tive as to whether the actor could be about to bid farewell to the char­ac­ter who revived his career back in 2008.

The prospect of Mar­vel with­out Iron Man is a daunt­ing one, par­tic­u­lar­ly when you look at the num­bers. World­wide, the four high­est gross­ing Mar­vel films have all fea­tured Iron Man, and the series has nev­er passed $1billion with­out him on the poster. A more (ahem) stark com­par­i­son is Civ­il War, offi­cial­ly a Cap­tain Amer­i­ca film, where Iron Man’s addi­tion helped to bring in over $400m more than Cap’s pre­vi­ous out­ing, The Win­ter Sol­dier.

In short, peo­ple love see­ing Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. And why not? It’s the role he was sim­ply born to play. As DC have found out at great cost, sim­ply hav­ing your hero be ​‘super’ can some­times be a bit bor­ing. Downey Jr has always under­stood that the con­flict hap­pen­ing beneath the suit is just as impor­tant. His wit­ty cyn­i­cism also makes him a per­fect foil for Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers. By his nature, Cap­tain Amer­i­ca believes in defend­ing society’s ideals, where­as Tony Stark wants to save us from our­selves. The latter’s flip­pant nature clash­es with the former’s sto­icism, and has been a cru­cial arc for the Avengers since their first meeting.

Char­ac­ter devel­op­ment is anoth­er key fac­tor. Stark went from war­mon­ger to peace­keep­er in the first Iron Man film, under­stand­ing the val­ue of peace after wit­ness­ing first-hand the con­se­quences of war. The pop­u­lar com­ic book sto­ry­line ​‘Demon in a Bot­tle’, which sees Stark bat­tle alco­holism, was nev­er like­ly to be ful­ly realised in a fam­i­ly-friend­ly block­buster, so PTSD became his on-screen demon, form­ing the main thread of Iron Man 3. In that film, Stark is haunt­ed by the effects of his new life, reveal­ing a man who is about much more than just tak­ing out the bad guys.

All good things must come to an end, of course, and Downey Jr (who will be in his mid-fifties by the time his cur­rent run ends) has been under­stand­ably vague about his future. In inter­views he has hint­ed that he may have a cou­ple more years left in the role, how­ev­er in 2015 an inter­view with Empire he remarked that future films could see him ​“take even a less­er posi­tion, with peo­ple I like and direc­tors I respect, maybe we can keep things bump­ing along.”

So, whether Downey Jr decides to scale back his involve­ment or leave the fran­chise for good, who will step up to fill his rock­et-pow­ered boots? Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch has the star pow­er as Doc­tor Strange, and has sim­i­lar ground­ing as an ego­tis­ti­cal man shak­en into hero­ism by per­son­al tragedy. Maybe Stark’s on-screen prodi­gy, Tom Hol­land, will impress enough as Spi­der-Man to become the MCU’s future MVP.

Or per­haps we haven’t met the Avengers’ new leader yet? Brie Larson’s Cap­tain Mar­vel might rein­vig­o­rate the fran­chise in the same way that Gal Gadot’s Won­der Woman shook things up Bat­man V Super­man: Dawn of Jus­tice, while in the comics the Iron Man man­tle has been tak­en on by a 15-year-old black woman named Riri Williams (aka Iron­heart). This would cer­tain­ly be a refresh­ing choice, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the lack of diver­si­ty in the MCU up to now.

In any case, it seems increas­ing­ly like­ly that Mar­vel will have to find a viable solu­tion soon­er rather than lat­er. The cast­ing of Robert Downey Jr, seen as a gam­ble at the time, sowed the seeds of an cin­e­mat­ic empire, so the impor­tance of putting the right per­son in his place can­not be overstated.