Avengers: Endgame Concept Designer Shares Fun Detail About Iron Man's Mark 85 Armor

Avengers: Endgame was the last ride for Tony Stark after he sacrificed himself to save Earth. One of the film's concept artist decided to give fans a closer look at the final suit of armor the hero would use in the climactic battle. Also, there was a sly nugget left for fans in Ryan Meinerding's Instagram post. It turns out that the designer had a hand in the first Iron Man suit for the MCU and now got to bookend his work with the last one. That sort of symmetry in rampant in Endgame as evidenced by the sound of Tony's hammer after the credits or his declaration of "I am Iron Man" before the fateful snap. The story might be about getting the universe back to normal in a lot of ways, but after repeat watchings, it can feel like an extension of Stark's personal journey. Quiet moments like the ones at his cabin and the visit to the past to talk to his late father really hammer some of these points home. Everything comes back and everything happens exactly how it is supposed to in this world.

The Russo Brothers' comments from before the movie premiered also illuminate how they talked about Tony Stark before the film as well. "Tony is essentially an egoist, and what is the essential conflict for an egoist?" Joe Russo continued. "Is it about what the egoist wants, or is it about subjugating the ego to what others may want from them? And family is really the most essential way to get to that conflict with Tony."

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Mark 85 from Avengers: Endgame! These are a couple of my final design images from the movie. I was so lucky to have designed Iron Man’s first suit and his last one. (And a couple in between 😀) #ironman #tonystark @robertdowneyjr

A post shared by Ryan Meinerding (@ryan_meinerding_art) on Nov 22, 2019 at 11:36am PST

These comments ended up being prescient as Iron Man ended up having a lot of the most powerful moments in the film. "We're always looking for the most epic journey we can take the characters on," Anthony Russo adds. "Often that means, whether it's Cap or Tony, taking them as far away from where they started as possible."

Over the course of basically three hours, the team tried to stuff as much of that completed arc for Tony Stark into the preceding bits as possible. "That was very much worked out on the script level with Markus and McFeely," Anthony Russo added. "We spent a long time with them exploring all the possibilities and honing down on what the essential storytelling was. [Fitting everything into the runtime is] such a complex question. You can't really be dealing with that once you get to production. That's definitely a script issue."