Iron Man may have already been the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most popular character long before his solo trilogy came to an end, but the franchise’s post-Avengers bump in commercial success saw Iron Man 3 earn almost as much at the box office as the previous two installments combined.
The movie remains divisive among fans for the controversial Mandarin twist, which has since been retconned thanks to the All Hail the King One-Shot and the upcoming Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and isn’t widely regarded as one of the MCU’s greatest entries, but it still delivered a solid conclusion to the title character’s journey before Tony Stark became the most high-profile supporting character in all of cinema.
One of the major criticisms about the Iron Man series was that every movie seemed to fall back on Tony having to battle against a rogue form of his own technology, and while the threequel deviated from the formula, it would be fair to say that the Extremis storyline wasn’t exactly one of the studio’s best.
However, the sight of Tony unleashing his full arsenal of Iron Man suits during the climactic action sequence was a fantastic bit of fan service, with eagle-eyed viewers spotting many variants that had been used in the comic books over the years. Now, concept artist Phil Saunders has revealed a much closer look at Iron Man‘s Mark 37 underwater armor, which you can check out below.
Saunders says that he was initially tasked to come up with designs for a hall of armor scene in the original Iron Man at the behest of Avi Arad in a move that was presumably designed to sell toys, which isn’t surprising given Arad’s history as the former CEO of Toy Biz and his reputation for focusing on the merchandising aspect at the expense of the story during his time as Marvel’s Chief Creative Officer and producer on the majority of the company’s non-MCU output. This is certainly an interesting and detailed look at the suit though and one that fans will no doubt appreciate getting to see.