Verrrry interesting take, because I've always seen it very much as those two movies (and the characters within them) using Tony as a scapegoat for other people's bad choices.
Toomes, for example. He absolutely got shafted re the chitauri tech cleanup operation, sure - no question. But was it Tony who shafted him?
Nope. It was the US government. It was the government who set up a department to deal with all the alien tech, and it was a government representative who told Toomes to go fuck himself when he raised his very valid argument of outlaid expenditures. It was under her direction that all the visible tech was taken off Toomes and it was her who refused to entertain the notion of compensating him for any of it or refunding any of the business purchases he'd already made.
And yeah, Tony was working in conjunction with the government agency in helping organise the clean up. Tony was the face of the clean up. Maybe he even funded some of it. But that's all he was. The donor of his name, time, and (possible) funds.
He wasnt the one who made the policies; who decided that no civilian should handle any of the tech. That was the government. And the woman who told Toomes to go fuck himself wasnt a Stark employee, she was a government employee. So it wasn't Tony's actions that fucked Toomes over, it was the government's actions - and more specifically the actions of one single unyielding government employee who couldn't give less of a shit. But because Tony was the face of the clean up, he's the one that Toomes blames.
Toomes then goes on to say "fine, fuck you, I'll make super illegal alien-tech weaponry and then sell those weapons in the city in which my wife and daughter live," and he blames Tony for that choice, but like...... he's the one who decided to create dangerous weapons, AND he's the one who KEPT selling them long past the point where his initial outlays had been well-paid back. Is that really Tony's fault? Or is it Toomes' fault, for choosing to create and sell weapons in order to get rich?
And Spidey 2.... Beck and his allies all blamed Tony for their misfortune, too, but were any of their misfortunes really Tony's fault?
Beck was fired from SI because he repeatedly tried to take BARF in a weaponised direction, against orders, even though the company who was employing him to work on BARF had a very well-known we-don't-make-weapons policy. His own behaviour got him fired after multiple warnings, but he blames Tony for it.
He also claims that Tony "stole" BARF, but it was clearly stated that BARF was created by SI employees, for SI. Which means that SI owned it.
If Beck were the sole creative mind behind the tech in question, he could have approached another company (such as one that actually did make weapons) and said to them, "hey, I have this great idea for a weapon." The fact that he didn't take the idea to another company tells us that it wasn't HIS idea. It wasn't his intellectual property, so he couldn't sell it.
And sure, yeah, he worked on it. He was one of the team that developed it. But he was employed to do that. If I'm employed by a company to do a painting, then I am the artist of the piece, but i'm not the owner. Especially if I'm just one of a team of painters. The company that hired me/us to do the piece is the owner. They commissioned it; they own it. Same with this. They employed Beck to do a job, and the job was to develop BARF. The fact that he was one of a team who worked on it doesn't give him ownership over the product or the idea, and it's blatantly unreliable narrating that he claims it does.
And all the others who also hated Tony in Spidey 2? were fired from SI because they worked with Stane in selling black market weapons to America's enemies.
they're pissed about losing their jobs, sure, but like..... are we really going to blame Tony for firing them, when the reason they got fired is that they were literally helping run an illegal black market arms dealing ring??? Call me a Tony apologist if you will, but I think firing them MIGHT have been the correct course of action.
In my opinion, the spidey movies don't showcase the impact that a careless richboy has on people below his notice. They showcase how some people will make bad decisions on their own merit and they will blame everyone but themselves for the consequences of those bad decisions.
Beck was a piece of shit, and he got fired for trying to weaponise tech that didn't belong to him, and instead of being like "hm maybe I shouldn't have repeatedly tried to weaponise tech at the No Weapons Allowed Company," he instead blames everyone but himself for the loss of his job.
The others all chose to help sell black market arms, but THATS not the reason they got fired, according to them; it's just because Tony Stark is a dickhead, or something.
Toomes could have pursued other avenues to get his money back; could have formed a class action with other affected contractors in New York, could have gone to the media and been like "hey, look what the government did to me, it's shit and I think they should reimburse me." Could have taken the alien tech and turned it into any number of things; personal vehicles or energy sources or something useful but non-damaging ---- but instead he decided to become a weapons inventor and dealer, and he blames Tony for this.
It's verrryyy different to the messaging in the IM movies, in which white capitalists deliberately and knowingly exploit whoever they can in order to make a buck, and are thus correctly shown as being the true villain of the film.
Had the spidey movies wanted to parallel this but make it about the unintended/unknown consequences of a richboy's exploitative ways (and: that WOULD be a great theme to explore, especially if it's a well-meaning richboy who nonetheless still causes damage that he's unaware of) then they should have chosen characters who were actually exploited by Tony, instead of characters who are either shit people or shit decision-makers, who blame everyone but themselves for the consequences of their own actions.
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