my apologies that this is so long. i had a lot more to say than i realised and this… just kind of happened.
so… lieutenant colonel james “jim” rupert “rhodey” rhodes… i have a lot of feelings about him and his character development and for once… i actually like what i see from the mcu. i love what the mcu has completely unintentionally done for him and i find it absolutely hilarious because i know it’s 100% unintentional, because they’d never purposefully make rhodey’s character development so anti-tony-stark. but that’s what we’ve been presented with. and i love it. hear me out:
in iron man 1 rhodey starts as tony’s babysitter. rhodey says so himself: “you don’t respect yourself so I know you don’t respect me - i’m just your babysitter” but despite the fact he knows tony doesn’t respect him, he’s still there for tony, still supporting him, still showing him as much love as he can no matter how little tony gives back. he puts it down the the fact tony doesn’t respect himself; he’s reckless and childish and doesn’t take responsibility for his actions. rhodey might be being sarcastic and snarky when he’s saying “when you need your diaper changed let me know and I’ll get you a bottle” but there’s some truth to it: he can’t help but mother-hen tony, because someone has to be responsible for the kid (he sure as hell can’t be responsible for himself!), and rhodey has put himself in that position.
i think a lot of that’s to do with the fact they both met really young in mit, with rhodey being a couple (?) years older than tony at the time. they stuck together because they were both in the unique position of being child prodigies, but because rhodey was the older of the two i think he quickly settled into a caregiving role. but by iron man 1, rhodey has emotionally matured, and tony hasn’t. he hasn’t needed to, being a white billionaire boy and all. so rhodey still sees tony as this kid he’s always been there for, always protecting, always giving and giving and giving to, and putting up with. they’ve been friends for so long that he’s used to it.
by iron man 2, rhodey is fed up. tony is being even more reckless than usual because he’s dying but no one knows, so rhodey is being pushed to his breaking point. there’s a deleted scene where rhodey says something which i feel says everything you need about what their relationship has become by now: “hanging out with you is bad for our friendship”. rhodey is starting to realise just how impossible being an actual friend - not just a yes-man and support staff - for tony is. and all that culminates in the fight scene where, upon seeing tony drunk and endangering his party guests in a WMD supersuit, rhodey reaches that breaking point. protects tony from himself one last time by fighting him, then cuts ties.
only, by the end of iron man 2, rhodey learns that taking the suit to the military and letting hammer get his paws on it was a bad idea, and that tony was literally near death the whole time he was being a dick, and then they have to team up to defeat vanko together. so despite having gone through all the shit tony’s put him through and realising how terrible a friend tony actually is, he chalks this all up to a mistake and a misunderstanding on his part. gives tony a second (or, more realistically, hundredth) chance. which is why in iron man 3 they’re best buds again. im3 is probably the healthiest depiction of their relationship tbh, and that’s on im3 tony being the least assholeish depiction of tony in the whole mcu (imo).
but tony’s character begins to sour massively from AOU onwards (not saying he wasn’t an… abrasive character beforehand, to say the least, but clearly all the guilt from causing ultron and inadvertently causing the mess in sokovia is affecting him and his relationships; pepper, another caregiving character that has put up with tony’s entitled, misogynistic bullshit for years, has left him, and i think that’s a massive sign that he’s spiralling in a similar way he did in im2. after all, the writers refuse to develop him as a character, which means he’ll never get help for his mental health and never learn healthy coping mechanisms. i honestly wonder what happened for pepper to leave - we’ve seen the breaking point for rhodey, so what was hers?)
so yeah, anyway, tony is starting to spiral again from AOU. civil war happens - he blames the team and latches onto the accords as a way to absolve himself of the guilt, bla bla bla, you know the plot. and, just like the others, rhodey is given mere days to read, consider, and sign this life-changing document; not only is his best friend vehemently, vocally, and violently in favour these documents, they’re also coming from a position of power that he, as a military man, respects. so it makes sense he’d initially be on the side of the accords.
and then something even more life-changing than the accords happens for rhodey. sam accidentally shoots him down and he injures his legs so bad that he can’t walk without support. and rhodey’s response to that? i know we don’t get to see much of rhodey’s response and recovery, which is a travesty, but what we do get? really sheds some light on the kind of man rhodey is, and how he develops as a person by the end of endgame.
for once in his life, rhodey is in the position of needing to be cared for - and on top of that, tony is the one offering. we also see that rhodey wants his recovery to be something he does alone as much as he possibly can, because that’s just the kind of person he is; we see the sheer amount of value he places on his ability to handle things on his own, and the skyrocket-high responsibility he holds himself to. and now all of a sudden tony’s actually trying to reciprocate the attention and care he’s shown him without reward for years (and only because of this guilt spiral he’s been on since AOU)… and that must have been fucking jarring for rhodey.
i think the sudden and strange role reversal probably helped him work out a few things about his relationship with tony a lot. which is why, when infinity war rolls around, they don’t interact. rhodey seems closer to and more in alignment with the “rogues”/“nomads” than tony. where once he agreed with the accords, he’s had some time to actually read them and reconsider them, and he’s against them now! he hates ross and greets steve with a warm hug!
and something i love so fucking much about infinity war (dispite all it’s other faults)? sam and rhodey’s relationship. sam shot rhodey down and disabled him for the rest of his life. and rhodey forgives him. first of all, because that’s the kind of person rhodey is (he’s had plenty of practice forgiving all kinds of shit with tony), and rhodey understands it was a mistake (and probably empathises with how horrible it must have been for sam; he’s military too, he understands that specific kind of guilt). interesting to compare rhodey’s response to the mistake with tony’s. and heartwarming to see that, for once, when rhodey forgives someone for what they’ve done, he is given gratitude and a genuine two-way friendship in response. i live for sam and rhodey’s every interaction in iw.
and then we get to endgame. know how many times rhodey interacts with tony in endgame? twice. first interaction: “okay, you made your point - just sit down, okay?” (read: “stop acting like a child before you hurt yourself”). second interaction: *sadly touches his face as he realises he’s dying before moving aside to let peter and pepper say their goodbyes*. what i love about these interactions - and the lack of any other interactions - is what it clearly means for rhodey:
1) tony still means a lot to rhodey. he’ll always mean a lot to him. they were best friends since they were literally just kids at mit. he’ll always, i think, love tony and want to care for and protect him (from himself, mainly). and tony, in his own way, will always love rhodey. but, 2) rhodey has still, nevertheless, cut ties with tony. i think the time away from action caused by the long recovery process he would’ve went through not only let rhodey reconsider his stance on the accords and his superiors in the military such as ross, but it also gave him time (and a wildly new perspective) to realise how toxic his relationship with tony truly is.
and what’s great to compare the way in which and reasons why he cuts ties with tony after civil war compared to the way in which and reasons why he cut ties with tony during im2, is that rhodey hasn’t been pushed to his breaking point this time. he has way more agency in his choice this time. he’s not leaving because he’s been infuriated one time too many; he’s doing it because he’s actually being given the kind of support he himself has been dishing out all these years… and doesn’t want it. not if it’s coming from the place of convenience and guilt that it is with tony. he cannot be guilt-tripped into forgiving tony anymore because he is making his choice this time with clear-mindedness.
and you know what’s so great about him finally genuinely cutting ties with tony this time around? he’s no longer his yes-man. he gets space to breathe as his own character. he jokes around more. he’s not annoyed all the time. he gets involved with the rest of the team. as i’ve said, he interacts with sam and it’s beautiful. he interacts with nebula and it’s heartwarming and they form a bond so quickly. and in all the new interactions he gets you see he is receiving so much more respect and reciprocation than he’s ever experienced with tony. and it makes me so happy.
also i can’t help but think about how it’s also a pretty big deal for him as a black character to go through all of these revelations and developments; black kids are often encouraged/forced to mature mentally/emotionally a lot quicker than white kits, and take on responsibility that shouldn’t be their burden to bear from a young age (which i think was absolutely something rhodey experienced as a highly intelligent black child), and it’s not uncommon for black characters to be portrayed in these caregiving roles to Hurt White Characters. so for him to break out of that box is just beautiful.
tony, on the other hand, is a white billionaire who never learned how to grow up; he’s never had to handle the kind of daily-grind stress that non-billionaire poc like rhodey have handled since they were a kid. not saying tony hasn’t faced other kinds of stress, but for the most part? everything has been given to him on a shiny golden platter. so when responsibility is thrust upon him - when his faults are actually pointed out - he doesn’t know how to handle it. hasn’t learned. it destroys his mental health. he gets destructive in turn. irreparably damages his relationships. spirals and spirals and refuses. to get. help. (you’re a billionaire, tony - you can afford a therapy. and the idealisation/romanticisation of unhealthy guilt spirals and a mindset of powering through despite everything and without asking for help until you crash and burn is not good mental illness/neurodivergent rep, it’s just the only one the mcu knows how to write.) i despair at the loss of opportunity when it comes to tony’s character and what he could have come to represent, but that’s another essay entirely.
when it comes to rhodey, however, the mcu have accidentally created a wonderful character and a wonderful character arc. that’s not to say they deserve any praise though, because this was likely never their intention and it’s purely accidental (again, they’d never purposefully give rhodey such an anti-tony character arc, just like they’d never intentionally make tony a bad role model, but that’s what they did, completely accidentally).
not only is rhodey a character who is unwaveringly kind and forgiving (and is rewarded for these traits later down the line in his new relationships), but we also get to see him learn how his kindness and forgiveness shouldn’t be taken for granted as it has been for years of his life. we see him step away from harmful relationships. we see him take back his life for himself - refuse to be someone else’s nanny. we see his growth and his development, and it’s wonderful, and i love him.
in conclusion: war machine rox.
I really like this analysis, but one thing that always confuses me is why do people blame Sam for Rhodey being shot?
Vision shot him. Sam tried to save him after.
oh, right! i meant to say that in the tags. thanks for reminding me @reebmiester :D also, given that rhodey was paralyzed waist down from vision’s blast, i’m uh. pretty sure that sam would’ve died if the blast had hit him, given that he isn’t wearing as much armor
In response to that addition, yes, that blast would have ultimately killed Sam. It’s not clear if it’s the hit itself or the fall that paralyzed Rhodey, although I always thought it was the fall, but either way, he has more armor than Sam. Also, with the trajectory of that shot, Vision would have hit Sam’s wings, specifically the backpack apparatus that the wings come from. This would have destroyed the wings and any propulsion the backpack device may have been providing, which in turn would have sent Sam crashing to the ground; again, Sam doesn’t have the amount of armor on that Rhodey has, and if a fall from that height badly injured Rhodey, it would have either killed Sam on impact or fatally wounded him.
That’s not even touching on what Tony did immediately after this, which, by all logic, should have injured Sam more than it did and was incredibly risky (being shot a few feet backwards onto your neck will not feel good, and will cause soreness and bruises at best or paralysis, broken neck bones, or death at worst).
