Low Yield Hot Takes are short blog posts about films with noteworthy nuclear plot points but not enough of an impact to escalate to a full podcast episode.
Iron Man doesn’t think we need a nuclear triad. Just an Iron Mono-ad?
I haven’t seen Iron Man 2 in a while, but I’m surprised how much movie plays with metaphors and terminology drawn straight from nuclear weapon history: misjudging proliferation timetables of adversary’s arsenal (iron man suits vs. Russia’s Joe-1), the fear of vulnerability after losing one’s deterrent (Iron Man going rogue or to a bar), weapon design theft (Ivan Vanko vs Klaus Fuchs), etc.
And with the Russian villain, rogue military industrial complex, and proxy wars, this movie could have really been called Marvel’s Iron Man: Cold War.
Fun random fact: one of the CGI software tools used by Industrial Light and Magic in the final fight scene of Iron Man 2 is called Nuke.
