Warning: Contains spoilers for certain plot points of Marvel’s upcoming Iron Man 3.
“Is Pepper in danger or is Pepper the saviour?” — Kevin Feige, Producer, Iron Man 3 (x)
Like any character who’s stuck around for decades and multiple incarnations, Pepper Potts is a lot of things. She’s a secretary with a crush. She’s a capable CEO. She’s a wife and a mother. She’s a superhero named Rescue. And now, with The Avengers and Iron Man 3, she’s a certified Movie Superhero Love Interest, and I would argue one of the most interesting and dynamic ones to date. Let’s take a look at the evolution of Pepper Potts, from comic to screen.
I won’t give you a full bio of Pepper in the comics — check out Marvel’s own wiki for that — but she’s filled a lot of roles and has been a constant presence in Tony Stark’s life, whether that’s as his employee, partner, occasional lover, or a suit-wearing hero in her own right. How do you interpret a character like that for something that needs to be as simplified as a major motion picture?
For starters, you subvert expectations. You give us Pepper as a personal assistant who is clearly the boss of her situation with Tony. You give us an independent career woman who’s not afraid to take charge of a tense situation. You explore her importance to Tony as one of the only people who’s stuck by him, who gets to see beyond his carefully cultivated facade. And while she’s largely served as a supporting character throughout the films so far, it looks like the filmmakers are beginning to recognize the importance of the comic book character in her own right, rather than just as the requisite Love Interest.
You can probably thank Mr. Robert Downey Jr., King of the Pepperony shippers, for a lot of that. “You can’t just pretend that I got in a fight with Rhodey and Pepper’s out of town,” Downey Jr. said regarding his role in getting Gwyneth Paltrow and Pepper to be a part of The Avengers when no other Love Interests were involved. “They said, ‘You can’t have both of them,’ so I said, ‘All right, I need Pepper.’”
The movies have now departed from the comics by actually canonizing the relationship between Tony and Pepper — though refreshingly, not by the end of the first movie, where a Superhero/Love Interest kiss would usually go — but that doesn’t diminish her role, only strengthens it. One of the most enjoyable aspects of their onscreen relationship is the comfortable banter and trust that’s formed between two people who have known and been there for each other for a long time: Pepper has always come across as an equal to Tony, despite not being a superhero herself. “There are scenes with Pepper in Iron Man 3 that are really emotional and really loving,” says producer Kevin Feige. “In a fun way, not in a dour, sort of movie-of-the-week way… a way that you don’t usually see between men and women in these kinds of action movies.”
And Downey Jr. hasn’t only pressed for Pepper’s involvement as a romantic partner. “I thought … how do we not have it so that she’s not just going, ‘Tony!’ And he’s not just going, ‘Where’s Pepper?’ You have all these genre movies and you have these capable women. And they’re kind of like, ‘Oh my God. Some action is happening. I better step away or get caught in something over here.’ And I was kind of like, ‘Really? Is that where we’re at in the 21st century?’”
As much as I would like to argue that women don’t need to kick ass to be kickass, he does have a point. It’s rare that a female character in a superhero movie gets to fill the role of Love Interest and Equal Partner and Hero in Her Own Right. Peggy can shoot a gun but isn’t directly involved in many of the main action sequences of Captain America. Jane has the smarts but, while helpful, essentially fills the role of a damsel-in-distress at the climax of Thor. Ditto Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson, Rachel Dawes. Pepper is so much more than that in the comics, and so far in the movies has proven herself capable as a leader and able to come through for Tony under pressure.
It’s not often that the Love Interest gets the chance to evolve into a superhero herself and it seems, according to this recent TV spot, that with the new film they are indeed planning to take her one step closer to becoming her comic book alter-ego: the Pepper that becomes Rescue, and Tony’s equal in more ways than one.
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