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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.

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