Iron Man: Rise of Technovore is a 2013 Anime film produced in collaboration by Sony Pictures Entertainment and Japanese animation studio Madhouse, who previously handled the Marvel Anime line. Based on the venerable Iron Man comic book franchise, the film sees Tony Stark (Matthew Mercer) on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D. after he is framed for a terrorist attack by Ezekiel Stane (Eric Bauza), the son of his deceased former nemesis Obadiah Stane (JB Blanc). The movie features appearances from Iron Man's partner War Machine (James C. Mathis III), as well as Hawkeye (Troy Baker), Black Widow (Clare Grant), Nick Fury (John Eric Bentley), and The Punisher (Norman Reedus).
The film was released as a tie-in to the live-action Iron Man 3, and as such takes some inspiration from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Iron Man: Rise of Technovore provides examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Though Tony says Obadiah genuinely loved Ezekiel, Obadiah would denigrate Ezekiel unless he made perfect scores on his school work.
- Action Girl: Black Widow appears in this film, and she's one of the agents (alongside Hawkeye) sent by Nick Fury after Tony. In one scene, she manages to catch The Punisher by surprise, wrapping his neck with rope when he thought she would easily surrender to him.
- Adaptation Distillation:
- Just going by the trailer, the film takes inspiration from the modern Iron Man comics, as well as the Ultimate Marvel universe and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
- Comic-wise, it seems to be an adaptation of the first arc written by Matt Fraction, The Five Nightmares.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: The brunet Ezekiel of the comics is blond in the film.
- Adults Are Useless: Defied. As soon as Tony figured out that his adversary, Ezekiel Stane, is just a kid (as he puts it, Ezekiel is like a "petulant child throwing a tantrum"), Tony tries to reason out with him during their next one-on-one encounter, outright saying that it's an adult's responsibility to help the young ones.
- Advertised Extra:
- Punisher is only in the movie for about ten minutes and he has little impact on the plot. He gives Tony some intel and hangs around for one fight scene; that's it.
- Hawkeye is in the same boat- though he has even less importance in the story than Punisher.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Helicarrier gets attacked again when Ezekiel managed to escape and hacks into the ship's computers, taking control over it, the Howard satellite, and a number of Kill Sats in preparation for The End of the World as We Know It. And he manages to send the Helicarrier crashing into Shanghai when he loses control of his own body. Doesn't help that he used the same trick Loki used to get on the Helicarrier.
- Alternate Continuity: The film seems to be set in an iteration of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but later events in the MCU make it incompatible with the film.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Iron Man and War Machine fight in tandem during the action scene of the prologue, and then against the Technovore after Rhodes recovered.
- Badass Normal: The Punisher, Hawkeye and Black Widow. Nick Fury too.
- Battle Couple: Hawkeye and Black Widow.
- Big Bad: Ezekiel Stane is the suspicious white-armored individual who's using some kind of advanced technology, responsible for killing people and blowing Rhodes inside the building (though Rhodes survives). He's Obadiah Stane's son, but has a god-complex thinking he's surpassed humanity. The final act of the film has him attempting to use the Technovore to create his ideal version of the world, but not before the Technovore "betrayed" him and turned him into a monster.
- Big Damn Heroes: War Machine/Rhodes arrives just in time during the final battle against the Technovore.
- Body Horror:
- Rhody being riddled with shrapnel and covered in burns.
- Ezekiel's eventual transformation due to the technovores is just horrifying. He mutates into a horrific monster while crying out in pain.
- Call-Back: Tony has a flashback to Obadiah Stane's death at the end of Iron Man
- Clear My Name: The main thrust of the plot is about Tony trying to clear his.
- Composite Character: Technovore is initially presented as a lot more like Extremis than the comics' Technovore.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: To Ezekiel Stane.
- Deadpan Snarker: Iron Man/Tony Stark, as usual.
- Eldritch Abomination: Technovore after it gains sentience and mutates its host. Although one could agree that he had already had become or was on the edge of being one at the start.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: War Machine is as good as new and fully equipped with lots of guns, just in time to save Tony and beat the shit out of Technovore. This quickly gets subverted when none of his weapons work on the even more evolved Technovore.
- The End... Or Is It?: "The wind."
- Evil Brit: Obadiah Stane is changed into this, as JB Blanc is Not Even Bothering with the Accent.
- Fanservice:
- Pepper sunbathing in a bikini.
- For the girls, there's at least two quick shots of Ezekiel nude.
- Black Widow spends most of her appearance with tight Spy Catsuit which expose her cleavage.
- Fan Disservice: A half-naked Ezekiel mutating into a hideous bioweapon upon losing control of the Technovore.
- A God Am I: Ezekiel Stane, courtesy of his bio-technological upgrades, thinks he has surpassed humanity. He plans to use the Technovore to create his own version of a pure world.
- Heroic BSoD:
- Tony after witnessing Rhodes getting blown up.
- Later Rhodes in turn gets one when he becomes hesitant to shoot Tony with the Kill Sat.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Tony lets himself get caught and pulled into Technovore so that the laser satellite can be fired directly at his arc reactor, destroying them. He survived.
- Idiot Ball: In the wake of a terrorist attack of which Tony Stark is the only survivor, Nick Fury decides to devote all of SHIELD's resources to finding Stark instead of following the lead that Stark gives him, and thus Stark himself turns to the Punisher for help.
- The only reason Fury spends the bulk of the movie chasing Iron Man is that he needs to have a debriefing with Stark to get the facts of the terrorist attack. Tony would have saved himself a lot of problems if he'd debriefed Fury before impatiently jetting off to chase down Technovore.
- It's Going Down: This time the Helicarrier does crash.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Ezekiel's favourite method of killing involves creating long pipe-like spikes via his technology and impaling humans with them. That and infecting seemingly normal surfaces and turning them into explosives.
- Kill Sat: A whole lot of them are in orbit. Ezekiel takes control of the Howard and uses it as a hub to direct the other satellites. Tony manages to take control of the Chinese laser satellite and uses it to destroy Technovore.
- Light Is Not Good: Ezekiel Stane is a blond with a biblical name and wears white.
- Male Gaze: Again, Pepper Potts, when she's sunbathing.
- Meaningful Name: Ezekiel
- Mythology Gag:
- There's a flashback shot of Obadiah Stane's death, which is identical to that in the Iron Man film.
- Two to The Avengers (2012):
- The Helicarrier gets attacked again and crashes this time round.
- Tony pulls off another Heroic Sacrifice in the climax. He survived this one as well. Worth noting that this time he manages to talk to Pepper in his would-be final moments; he wasn't able to previously.
- Tony suggests he and Pepper go skiing at Asgard or have a safari in the Savage Lands.
- Captain America is mentioned, albeit indirectly. When Ezekiel starts comparing humans as if they're "dinosaurs" or relics from the past, Tony jokingly says he knows a guy from the 40's.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands:
- There are no less than three occasions where Ezekiel is about to kill Tony and other main characters, but doesn't because the Technovore begins acting up.
- The technovores are nice enough to completely heal Rhodey when he wakes up.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Tony Stark successfully manages to hack Ezekiel Stane out of S.H.I.E.L.D. using his Arc Reactor, but unfortunately, this also makes Ezekiel lose control from his own bio-technological body, go insane and turn himself into a monster...
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The technovores heal Rhodey (and presumably repair his armor) when he wakes up from his coma, allowing him to come to Iron Man's rescue in the climax.
- Noodle Incident: This isn't the first time Tony asked Pepper for help during her vacation.
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Despite being based on the MCU, JB Blanc doesn't try putting on an American accent, instead voicing Obadiah Stane as an Evil Brit.
- Not So Stoic: Ezekiel Stane is mostly seen as an emotionless or stoic kid, especially when he's killing people, mocking humanity, and bragging about his Technovore technology in a god-complex way. But when the Technovore starts acting up and when he gets turned into a monstrous bioweapon before the final battle, Ezekiel is visibly panicking. Tony even subtly notices that something is wrong when he personally sees Ezekiel distressed.
- One-Winged Angel: Pulled TWICE by Ezekiel Stane. The first time after he loses control of his Bio-technological armor, he turns into a large, deformed and four eyed ogre-like creature capable of shapeshifting at will. Later, after fighting Iron Man and War Machine, he envolved into a full-blown Eldritch Abomination made of nano-technology.
- Outside-Context Problem: After his first encounter with Ezekiel, Tony couldn't figure out what kind of "advanced techonology" (the Technovore) is Ezekiel using, which is why he needed help and information gathering from Pepper. He even lampshades whether or not it's comparable to the previous adversaries he faced, and they both wonder if Advanced Idea Mechanics is involved.
- Physical God: Ezekiel Stane has rather god-like powers thanks to his technology, and he believes himself to be one.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Rhodes jokingly says he may have "overslept" before arriving to aid Tony against the Technovore, considering how he was basically comatose for a while.
- Private Military Contractors: Raiders, Mini-Mecha riding mercs hired by Ezekiel to aid in his attack on the launch pad.
- Reaching Towards the Audience: Iron Man, in the official poster.
- The Reveal: Rhodes is actually still alive, albeit in a critical condition, when Tony thought he was dead in the explosion that happened near the beginning of the film.
- Revenge: Tony thinks that Ezekiel's terrorist attack was in retaliation of him killing his father in the first film. Subverted when Ezekiel tells him that he couldn't care less about his father and Tony was merely in the way.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Tony was genuinely pissed at Ezekiel for supposedly killing Rhodes and was not hesitant to actually hurt the child.
- Say My Name: When Tony's allies realize that he's planning to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to stop the Technovore, Rhodes briefly struggles with the decision to fire the laser satellite. Though he goes along with it, Rhodes shouts "Tony!" as the laser reaches its target.
- Straw Nihilist: Ezekiel Stane. Sasha Hammer was reading a book about Friedrich Nietzsche to Ezekiel.
- Teens Are Monsters: Ezekiel, a child who thinks he's god and sees that it's his right to improve humanity, even if it means destroying it. He also tends to kill people without showing any emotion.
- Villainous Breakdown: When the Technovore takes over Ezekiel's body.
- Wham Line: One of Tony's methods for gathering information on the Big Bad involves hilariously snatching a suspect's phone. When he scrolls through the list of contacts, he immediately notices "Ezekiel Stane". The surname rings a bell for him, as he previously killed Obadiah Stane. Sure enough, Tony's main adversary in this film is Obadiah's son.
- World of Snark: Almost everyone says something snarky at some point.
