ok not to post a whole ass thinkpiece but. marvel is really obviously behind the times with having tony stark be theĀ āheartā of the avengers because his kind ofĀ āfuck it, iāll do what i wantā style of masculinity is just. outdated at this point. like i definitely think as a culture in 2008 we were more open to reading that as fun and endearing, but over the past 10 years (and the last 2 or 3 in particular) that douchey-but-in-a-cool-way masculinity has really started to show itself as toxic in so many waysā¦.
anyway. i think that if marvel let their writers have time to get closer with characters and somehow incentivized good storytelling we probably would have seen tony either a) pass the torch of true leadership to another avenger a while ago or b) grow more as a character and become a different kind of leader himself
tldr my hypothesis is that tony stark is becoming unpopular and stale not only because marvel films have less than stellar character dev, but because his kind ofĀ ārich douche who does whatever he wants with styleā masculinity has ceased to be charming in our cultural climate