Over the course of a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tony Stark has continued to impress with more advanced and powerful iterations of the Iron Man armor.
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But the suit in Avengers: Infinity War is Stark’s most impressive armor yet, utilizing nanotechnology to respond to its wearer’s mental commands at a whim, shapeshifting to his Thanos-fighting needs.
The crew at Marvel Studios had to figure out a way to make the suit look unique while maintaining the classic appearance of the Iron Man armor.
“This is liquid metal. And when you’re dealing with liquid metal and nanotechnology, you’re not going to use nanotech to form bolts and screws and rigid sheet metal panels and stuff like that,” said visual development concept supervisor Phil Saunders. “It just doesn’t make any sense. So the first thinking we were thinking about was ‘Okay, how do we maintain something that’s still grounded as an iron man suit, but it makes sense in that it’s liquid metal?’”
“I spend a lot of time thinking about and illustrating how the suit would form–wanting to get a sense that even though it’s liquid metal, its not one large, cohesive liquid metal. It’s actually forming all the anatomical hairs underneath. there’s sort of a neurological layer and a circulatory-system layer that gets formed, and then a layer of musculature.”
Of course, Iron Man needed this upgrade if he was going to be able to go up against Thanos. The Mad Titan is the toughest villain whose ever been in the MCU, requiring a ton of firepower for those who hope to stop him, according to Marvel Studios EVP of Production Victoria Alonso.
“The Bleeding Edge was something that we talked about for a long time,” Alonso said. “We wanted to have something that was tighter to the body, that he could command on the go, that didn’t require him to suite up elsewhere. He could do it just by tapping the RT, and create different weapons that came from the suit itself so he could defend himself — because don’t forget, he’s never had to face someone like Thanos.”
After falling short to the Mad Titan, Stark might need yet another upgrade to right the wrongs in the MCU. We’ll see how he improves the Iron Man armor yet again when Avengers 4 premieres on May 3, 2019.
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