This scene has been used by pretty much every video I’ve seen critical of the Disney+ take on Ironheart. In the show, Riri complains that she doesn’t have Tony Stark’s money and can’t build as good a suit as his Iron Man armor because of that lack of funds. While studying at MIT on a full scholarship. And designing projects for kids in other schools for money that she could have made herself for money. The counterargument specifically comes from Obadiah Stane’s line “Tony Stark built this in a cave. With a box of scraps.” This is considered a big deal, and seeing as clips I found like this predate Riri Williams’ debut in Black Panther(less): Wakanda Forever it’s not like the scene isn’t already well know by fans. Could I call it “iconic”? Considering that’s word damage I can’t blame Alanis Morissette for, I couldn’t tell you even if I cared.

This article is not to join on the bashing…because by it’s nature it shows further flaws in Riri’s character. Brian Michael Bendis created Miles Morales for his son and Riri Williams for his daughter, and given not only the response but the way the characters have been written by himself and later writers, I think she got the raw deal. While Spider-Man version 2 started out in another universe, and only moved to 616 after the original Ultimate Universe became a victim of the bad writing in all the other Ultimate titles and just some of the horrible things the “heroes” did in those not Ultimate Spider-Man titles, Riri was always written with an ego, a lame backstory, and was always meant to replace Tony Stark in the main universe. This led to poor reception of the character that no writer since has been able to fix because they keep adding to the bad ideas.

Or maybe someone tried. I need to finally watch this show. Also curious what the Disney Junior Iron Man series is going to do with her.

Anyway, the reason for this article is to actually show just how amazing Tony’s armor is in actual context. There’s more to what Tony pulled off than being in a cave with a box of scraps. After all, those scraps were stolen Stark technology and he probably designed most if not all of it. No, when you really think about what he pulled off in that cave you see just how much of a genius he was. The fact that it makes Riri’s decree that it’s the money that made Tony Stark Iron Man look even dumber is just a bonus coincidence.

Did we forget how Tony ended up in that cave?

Tony was in Afghanistan (Vietnam in the comics, but times change and the sliding timeline probably changed that, too) demonstrating his latest weapon for the government. The US government, the good guys depending on who you ask. His own weapons were ending up in the hands of terrorists thanks to Obadiah Stane, whose only loyalty was his bank account. How did that go for him? Well, considering in Ironheart we learn his son keeps his ashes in large bag in the kitchen or something, not very well. Now the “10 Rings” (a reference to longtime Iron foe the Mandarin until later Marvel movies screwed that up for a cheap gag and later so someone could turn Shang-Chi into Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon–which you should totally watch instead) have the man himself, they want him to make weapons directly for them. No middleman, free of charge.

That means that Tony and Yinsen, one helper who is also a prisoner, had to build their tool of escape under the watchful eye of terrorists who would surely kill them if they knew what he was really making. They wanted more missiles, but Tony and Yinsen were building a suit of armor that could fight the terrorists and allow them to escape. As it is, Yinsen had to sacrifice his life to allow Tony time to power up the suit. Tony managed to escape, barely.

Tony Stark didn’t have Tony Stark to copy from.

Tony and Yinsen were working from parts of his missiles, the repulsor technology that fired them (beats the jet boots he used in comics all those year, nobody asking how boots hold enough jet fuel to fly across the country), and the arc reactor he was building and had to miniaturize to power the armor. Everything else that went into the armor, including the escape jets and flame throwers, they had to design from scratch without the terrorists catching on. While Riri was reverse engineering Iron tech stolen appropriated by and later from Wakanda, they had to design everything from the ground up.

It needed to be armor that could fight the terrorists, and they didn’t have time to build one for each of them. Tony alone was going to be bulletproof so he had to be able to also protect Yinsen before the plan hit a snag and it would just be Tony. He didn’t just build this stuff in the cave. He designed it as well.

So technically, the Ironheart armor is already better than the Mark I armor as depicted in the movie. (The only real difference between Mark I and Mark II in the comics was a paint job.) It even fell apart just after escaping and Tony was lucky that Rhodey (who hadn’t been retconned into a Skrull because Marvel Studios hates James Rhodes as much as Marvel Comics does) found him as soon as he did. From there he built the Mark II we saw in the rest of the movie because he did have the superior tech available to him to properly design the armor. Tech that Riri also had available in Wakanda and MIT and somehow in her apartment that she shared with her mom. Mark I Iron Man didn’t have an AI of any kind, or heads up display, or energy weapons. Riri was ahead of the game without running to the Marvel’s devil analog.

Side note: someone in the comments of that video (if I’m still using the same one) noticed that Tony’s new designs always include faster and faster suit-up times. You know I love a good suit-up transformation sequence, but the poster noted that being too late to save Yinsen because of the initial charge time might be the reason why, and it makes perfect sense. Plus it’s a good idea overall since this Tony only had a secret identity for a month as opposed to years in the comics, undone in a very lame way but I won’t get into that here. I did that here.

Let’s see. I’m forgetting something. Cave. Scraps. Terrorists. Made from scratch rather than working for Old Scratch. What was that other thing, that rather important detail that gets to the heart of the matter, of why Ironheart doesn’t need Tony’s money. Wait, of course…

TONY STARK WAS #$%$#%# DYING AT THE TIME!

In both the comics and the movie, Tony’s heart was damaged when the bad guys’ bomb went off. The comics made a big deal about the breastplate keeping the shrapnel from puncturing his heart until years later when advances in medical science allowed it to be removed. In the MCU the mini arc reactor was a replacement for his heart, in the center of his chest because it also powered the armor and that’s the most aesthetically matching place to put it. Not quite how the comic did it, but nobody complained. Unlike Ironheart. After years of asking Marvel Studios to match the source material they finally did it…and it’s in how bad a character Riri is. So even when they do it right, Marvel Studios finds a way to screw it up. It’s like they want to fail.

So he has to build a low-tech (in comparison to his other inventions and the later armors) means of escaping terrorists, while those terrorists watched him closely, without computers or an AI, with pieces of missiles and random other junk, while dying, and without a penny of his money going to any of it outside of having to build the missiles. Remember, the “box of scraps” line was already popular before Riri was ever an MCU character. So was this song.

So no, Riri, you don’t need Tony’s bucks if you’re really a genius. You just need his talent, to stop treating everyone like they’re your enemy except for your actual enemies, making deals with the devil’s stand-in, or blackmailing anyone. You already have something better than his first design. Just work on that. Stop being a drama queen. For all of Tony’s faults, and he had many of them, that wasn’t one of them. He worked as hard as he partied, and the man could party anyone into the ground. He gave his life later to stop Thanos, and almost gave his life in the previous alien invasion. Tony Stark was a good man with a good mind. Riri Williams is none of those things. She’s just a kid with a knockoff suit not understanding how one becomes “iconic”.