it’s almost definitely the reason why Musk keeps making utterly cringe cameos in sci-fi shit, starting with Iron Man 2 and continuing on to Star Trek: Discovery and (of fucking course) Rick & Morty, and a bunch of other weird shit like the Saturday Night Live episode that was just propaganda. his former PR team very likely set up whatever price point worked for the studios so Musk could pay for a cameo, and Musk loved it so much he kept doing it after he fired that team.
what’s fucking bizarre is the Iron Man writers seem to swear their version of Tony Stark was based on Musk, and we know now Musk’s nothing like that. so looking back with more seasoned eyes: how much of the first Iron Man was just propaganda too? of course there’s all the libertarian shit — whose idea was all that, actually?
what’s fucking bizarre is the Iron Man writers seem to swear their version of Tony Stark was based on Musk, and we know now Musk’s nothing like that. so looking back with more seasoned eyes: how much of the first Iron Man was just propaganda too? of course there’s all the libertarian shit — whose idea was all that, actually?
You want my suspicion, Marvel were probably taking their cues from the public image SpaceX/Tesla’s marketing and/or Musk’s PR team had put out about the guy - as an eccentric genius par excellence who’d save humanity from global warming and/or get us to Mars.
Tony Stark treats him like a Putz in Iron Man 2. Not sure that’s what Musk was going for.
it’s really bizarre how obviously forced the propaganda is, looking back:
- the cameo’s very short and not very flattering — Tony’s written as close to blowing Musk off as they could probably manage, and they definitely weren’t giving him more than the bare minimum screen time he paid for
- part of the deal was they got to film in the Tesla factory, so it’s the bad guy’s base and it looks (to my memory, it’s been a minute since I’ve seen Iron Man 2) boring as fuck, like nobody really wanted to film there
given how utterly, sickly-sweet positive his latter cameos are, Musk was probably pissed at his Iron Man 2 cameo and had a few new clauses written into his contract with the studios going forward. as for why the crew’s attitude toward Musk seemed to change between the first and second films, my theory is: according to reputation and second-hand experience, Musk has always been a fucking asshole in person. he probably burned out the crew’s good will quickly, and they just wanted to be rid of him.
I think it was SpaceX, not Tesla, but yeah… boring AF warehouse.
part of the deal was they got to film in the Tesla factory
Wait he pulled a Trump?