HWI 516

Hollywood What If Chapter 516

Alexa Nguyen was humming while fixing the robotic suit of Iron Man. She inspected the golden paint on the suit, making sure that it wouldn't fall off while shooting... This was the fourth version of the suit because the first three versions didn't last long for work reasons.

She looked at the suit. It looked like a real metal robotic suit, but it was actually made of rubber and other light materials. She nodded as she confirmed that the suit looked real.

Alexa was a student who studied at the California Institute of Arts and hoped to become an actress. She finished her college and worked in the industry...

Unfortunately, she couldn't find jobs as an actress because of her appearance. The best she could get were nameless extras that were in the background.

In this industry, appearance was the biggest factor to determine if an actress would become famous or not... Most of these actresses were gorgeous, fit, and young.

Only a few female actresses failed the three criteria to become successful actresses, such as Whoopi Goldberg, Tilda Swinton, Barbra Streisand, and others... No offense, just a personal opinion. We can also put Ellen DeGeneres in that criteria since that talk show host has some questionable doings.

As for why Hollywood prefers beautiful, fit, and young women. The answer was beauty standards. The media says some impossible beauty standards that people believe to be real. They didn't know that actresses and female models had to stay slim by not eating just to maintain their figure.

Anyway, Alexa didn't pass the criteria for becoming an actress. It wasn't because of her race, just the simple fact that she was not blessed in beauty aspects.

After those years of failure to become an actress, Alexa couldn't let go of her dreams of working in Hollywood. She decided to work as a costume designer instead.

After years of hard work, she found herself getting hired by Marvel Studio as the costume designer of Iron Man's suit.

To be honest, Alexa read a few comics but she had never heard of Iron Man. But because of her job, she had read a few comic volumes just to understand the character's design.

One thing she realized while looking at Iron Man comic's appearance, his old version was wacky as fuck. He looked like a walking medicine capsule with red color at the top and yellow at the bottom. She cringed while looking at Iron Man's old design.

Thankfully, Iron Man's appearance in the new version of comics looked better. This was also the design that Alexa followed while improving visual aesthetics. Marvel Studio had started releasing a new version of Iron Man a few years ago as a preparation for the upcoming MCU.

The filming of Iron Man was ongoing and the management hired an ex-convict to be the protagonist of Iron Man, which was a bit surprising for Alexa. This was her first biggest job so she wanted it to be successful. She was skeptical at first when she heard that Robert Downey Jr., an actor who went to prison, would take the role of Tony Stark.

However, when Alexa met the actor, she realized that Robert was more approachable than his co-star, Terrence Howard. Alexa had a few conversations with Robert; their topics were mostly about the suits and their comfort and how to improve them.

To be fair, most celebrities were arrogant so Robert was a new experience to Alexa. She even knew a delusional classmate who bragged that she was Kazir Grey's sister, at least arrogant celebrities had a valid reason to be arrogant.

Anyway, based on what she heard, Robert Downey Jr. was actually recommended by Kazir Grey to star as Tony Stark. Some people from the management of Marvel Studio were against it but Kazir was one the leader of the MCU next to Avi Arad and Stan Lee. Also, Kazir was the best director of Hollywood so the management decided to believe in him.

They cast Robert Downey Jr. to become the billionaire Tony Stark. Of course, Marvel Comics made sure that Robert wouldn't do any drugs while working on Iron Man, which was written in the contract. If Robert failed to do that, he would have to pay damages to Marvel Comics and he would be fired.

So far, Robert was doing well in his job. In fact his acting as Tony Stark was superb.

People believed that Marvel Cinematic Universe, a huge project that 20th Century Fox, Marvel Studio, and Grey Pictures working together would prosper.

Aside from Iron Man, Marvel Studio was also working on another project which was The Incredible Hulk. The studio hired Mark Ruffalo to be Bruce Banner.

If Iron Man was a sort of a nobody, then Hulk was a famous comic character that many people knew.

These two superheroes would be the introduction of people to the MCU... Marvel Studio spent millions on these two projects, hoping that they could turn the once-bankrupt company into a profitable one.

News Corporation and 20th Century Fox were expecting good news from them, and the management of Marvel Studio couldn't help but feel nervous and pressured about that.

The DCEU that Warner Brothers was cooking failed because of Superman and other factors, so the MCU didn't have a rival, except for CCU, of course.

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[I'm having trouble with how to advance the plot so I decided to use another character's PoV. I also remembered that Iron Man is set to be released in 2008 so I decided to tackle it.]