Iron Man 3: Why Tony's "Perfect" Armor Looked So Weak
Tony Stark obsessively built new sets of armor in Iron Man 3, yet the Mark 42 suit, his magnum opus at the time, seemed weaker than his armors in previous MCU films. 2012’s The Avengers was a turning point for Tony Stark, putting him on a team with superpowered (or highly skilled) colleagues and having him face off against an army of aliens. Tony’s Iron Man 3 suits were meant to prepare him for any scenario, but he never completed work on his latest suit at the time, preventing it from being his most powerful armor yet.
Tony Stark’s near-death experience in The Avengers left him with lasting trauma, so he built thirty-five new suits by the events of Iron Man 3. Many of the suits were tailored for specific situations, providing Stark with armor for almost any occasion and a coping mechanism for his paranoia of greater threats coming to Earth. The Mark 42 armor combined the best elements of all previous suits and had the most robust suit-up method, assembling in pieces (each with their own flight system) around Stark.
Related: Why The Ten Rings Organization Was So Weak In Iron Man (Vs. Shang-Chi)
Despite being what should have been his greatest armor yet, the Mark 42 repeatedly malfunctions throughout Iron Man 3. In addition to easily running out of power (impacting its performance in combat against AIM forces), the suit also repeatedly fell apart in response to powerful impacts, such as being hit by a truck. The Mark 42 appeared to be a far cry from Tony Stark’s earlier armors, but the fact that it was never finished was the only reason why it seemed so weak. As stated by JARVIS, the Mark 42 Iron Man armor was still in its prototype stage and was therefore not combat-ready. Regardless, Stark used the unfinished suit as
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