Iron Man 2 begins eight months after the original Iron Man movie in that world.  The changes in the relationship between Tony and Pepper are apparent immediately with a scene that was ultimately cut from the theatrical version.  Pepper seems to have taken a firmer hand in keeping Tony in one piece now that he’s come out as Iron Man.  She’s more forceful and less likely to take his crap.

The cut scene shows a hung over Tony emptying his stomach into a toilet while wearing his Iron man suit.  Pepper tough loves him into jumping out of the plane to land at the Stark Expo, but before he jumps he tries to weasel a kiss out of Pepper and she responds by kissing his helmet then throwing it out of the plane.

I was fascinated by that scene, it was great from a director’s standpoint, but it also showed a certain amount of relaxing between the two characters.  A year before, Pepper never would have done something like that.

The movie progresses and continues with the theme between them that; ‘Behind every brilliant mind is a second person who holds it all together.’

The core of the reactor keeping Tony alive is killing him.  We are shown this early in the movie and it explains a lot of the things he does that seem impulsive, even for Tony Stark.

Back to the Tony and Pepper relationship, the BIG thing that happened, in my opinion, was Tony making her CEO of Stark Industries.  It’s clear from their dialog that she’s been running the company for him for months, probably since he came out as Iron Man.  Stark Industries is the only thing that Tony really has a vested interest in, it was the company founded by his father and a constant theme with him is to make it as great as his father intended.  So he gives it to Pepper.  This is big.  He effectively makes her his equal, elevating her from the secretary role and he cuts his CEO ties with Stark Industries immediately.  There’s no looking over her shoulder, he knows she will run it better than he could.

There is a moment on the jet from Monaco to California where Tony -almost- fesses up about the Palladium core killing him.  He makes her the most disgusting looking omelet, she twigs that something is up with him.  When pressed, Tony tries to talk her into going to Venice, Italy with him to relax, but Pepper is not Tony.  She refuses to drop her responsibilities at such a horrible time and he drops the idea completely.

A lot of people didn’t like the way Gwyneth Paltrow played Pepper Potts in IM2, but I think the way she played Pepper was brilliant.  Pep got a huge promotion dumped on her shoulders and Tony…well, Tony was just being Tony on steroids.  He’s dying and he’s going to live it up before he goes.  Both characters go into a rather dark place, more so with him, but she also starts getting hard.

Tony hits rock bottom at his birthday party, getting trashed and using his suit to blow things up for fun.  He effectively alienates both Rhodie and Pepper before getting his butt handed to him by his friend in the War Machine suit.

Fast forwarding past the hangover and Tony’s meeting with Nick Fury, Tony Stark finally figures out he’s messed up.  He picks up strawberries and heads to his old office at Stark Industries to apologize to Pepper.  He actually almost manages to squeeze out a ‘I love you’ before she cuts him off and kicks him to the curb.  After the way Tony treated her the previous night, that’s the best thing she could have done before you consider he brought her the only food in the world she was allergic to as a peace-offering.  Oops.

Thanks to help from his dead father, Tony discovers a new element that will replace the Palladium core just in time for Ivan Vanko to attack the Stark Expo.

During a recent screening of Iron Man 2 I noticed something…odd.  Natalie Rushman- aka Black Widow- aka Natasha Romanov- seems to be pulling double duty.  She’s shadowing Tony Stark, but she also appears to be shadowing Pepper Potts on the side.  Not just because she works with Pepper as a ruse, it’s more of a situation that she is shadowing her as part of the Iron Man investigation.  The last scene of the movie with Nick Fury echoes this hunch.  It’s only when Tony mentions that he’s trying to do the right thing by Pepper that Fury informs him that’s why they would rather keep him on as a consultant.

Most people will argue that it was the reasons prior to that one that Fury was referring to, but it makes me wonder.  In movies every single word is weighed, measured and debated.  The rest of the Avengers tied to SHIELD usually work solo, there are love interests, but most of them don’t have the level of involvement in the superhero identity that Pepper Potts has with Iron Man.  I think Fury knows that if he takes on Tony Stark/Iron Man, that anything that happens involving Tony will also involve Ms. Potts.  Maybe there is another reason they don’t want to involve Pepper that I’m not seeing, but I think there might be something to this hunch.

By the end of Iron Man 2, Pepper and Tony have kissed and made up…literally.  A few days later we see Tony meeting with Nick Fury about working with SHIELD and it’s alluded that they are in a relationship.  This surprised me the first time I saw IM2 because, frankly, at this point with both of them I don’t see a relationship lasting.  Maybe this is done on purpose…give the fans what they want but not in the way they want it.

My next post will dig into The Avengers and Iron Man 3.  There isn’t a lot of information out there yet, but I think I can guess how this will play out with the Tony Stark-Pepper Potts relationship.