Howard Stark (MCU)



"My name is Howard Stark and I'd personally like to show you, my ass."

- (Iron Man 2) Howard fooling around for his presentation on the Stark Expo.

Howard Anthony Walter Stark, or better known as Howard Stark, was the father of Tony Stark, and was the founder of the Stark Industries company, as well as the former Stark Industries CEO, before it was passed on to his son, Tony.

He was portrayed by three different actors, in three different films, namely Gerard Sanders in the movie Iron Man, John Slattery in Iron Man 2 and Dominic Cooper in Captain America: Civil War and Captain America:The First Avenger.

He was married to Maria Stark, and together they had a son named Tony. He participated in many projects way before the events of Iron Man, and met Captain America.

His intense studies of the Space Stone (contained within the Asgardian relic known as the Tesseract) led him to theorize a new element based on the power emitted by the Infinity Stone. Unable to synthesize it, he left this knowledge behind for Tony in the hopes he would one day create it.

In Avengers: Endgame, Tony meets him in the past while trying to get the Tesseract.

Appearance
Howard had black hair in his early twenty's to mid-thirties. He wore a grey vest with a tie, and had a black mustache on his face. As he aged, his hair turned white but he still kept his general appearance.

Personality
Howard's personality is very similar to his son's.

He is very arrogant due to his intellect but does care for his few friends and masks much of what he says with sarcasm. Much like Tony he was a notorious womanizer before he married Maria Stark.

The continued role of his weapons, caused him to lose much of his optimism by the time Tony was born causing him to be distant to his son. Despite that, he did love Tony more than anything else and had great faith that Tony would change the world for the better if given the chance.

Captain America: The First Avenger
Howard Stark founded Stark Industries in 1939, becoming the main arms manufacturer for the US military during the Second World War. His technological brilliance earned him a spot on the Manhattan project as he continued to create increasingly powerful weapons for the Allied cause. During this time, he managed to acquire a sample of Wakandan Vibranium which he kept for personal study.

When Project: Rebirth was started, he assisted Doctor Erskine in transforming Steve Rogers into Captain America before Erskine was assassinated. Since Erskine had never written down the formula, Stark was given a vial of Steve Rogers' enhanced blood and tasked to recreate the serum. Stark noted it could take years, before he was then assigned to Italy to aid on the European front.

When Bucky Barnes was captured, Stark was convinced by Peggy Carter to fly Captain America to Austria to attempt a rescue mission before offering to spend the night in the country with Peggy. He was unable to be punished for his role in the mission as he was not technically part of the US military.

Howard was then tasked to offer Steve Rogers a new shield and was forced to part with his Vibranium sample before he designed new uniforms and technology for the Howling Commandos. He later studied a sample of Tesseract energy that the Commandos had brought to him, finding it to have unbelievable power. He later attended a briefing about the final assault on the HYDRA stronghold in the Alps noting that his calculations showed that the Red Skull was capable of wiping out the entire Eastern Seaboard with his Tesseract derived weapons.

After Steve Rogers was MIA after crashing the Valkyrie and the Allied victory of the war, Stark charted several expeditions to try and find his friend, managing to recover the Tesseract. Unable to find Rogers, he gave up and began expanding his company and studying the powerful cube.

His studies into the Tesseract led him to believe it could potentially solve the energy crisis of the entire planet, which became the inspiration for his Arc Reactor technology. He eventually realized that the Tesseract itself was merely a containment device for an incredibly potent power source at its core. Unknown to Howard, this was one of the six legendary Infinity Stones, specifically the Space Stone. He theorized a new element based off the Space Stone's structure and power emissions but proved unable to synthesize it with the technology of his time substituting it with Palladium. In the 1960s, he managed to create a large scale Arc Reactor using Palladium before he shelved the project indefinitely.

In 1970, he and his wife Maria had a son called Antony "Tony" Stark. In 1974, Howard left concealed notes for Tony within a home video in the hopes his son would succeed in synthesizing the Infinity Stone derived element while admitting Tony was Howard's greatest creation.

In 1987, Howard met Hank Pym at SHIELD but the man only stayed two years due to the death of his wife making it clear he blamed Stark for what had gone wrong. Howard however had barely given Pym any thought to the point where Tony had no idea who the man was over twenty years later.

Captain America: Civil War
By 1991, Howard Stark had managed to recreate and upgrade the Super Soldier Serum that had made Captain America. He'd managed to remove the dependency on large machines and vita-rays reducing it to a simple, if slow, injection that made the subject superior to even Captain America with the side effect of increased aggression. By this time he was well aware HYDRA still existed and had sent Tony to school abroad to try and keep him safe as well delivering the Serum to the Pentagon for usage against HYDRA. On the way, his car was attacked by the Winter Soldier, whom he recognized as his old friend Sergeant Barnes, before he and his wife were killed and the Serum taken for HYDRA's usage.

Iron Man
Howard Stark was shown in a video about Tony Stark's life and history, during an award ceremony at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

Iron Man 2
Nick Fury approached Tony Stark when he was dying and revealed that Howard's studies on the Asgardian Tesseract had led him to theorize a new element based on its core that would power Tony's Arc Reactor without the fatal side-effects his current Palladium reactor has. Fury had Tony work on rediscovering the element and assigns Phil Coulson to ensure that he worked on it, noting that SHIELD and the world needed Tony Stark. Tony had no luck in finding clues in Howard's old files and films, before he discovered a video message to him from Howard where the elder Stark, who Tony thought held no love for him, admitted that he loved Tony very much, viewing him as his greatest creation and told him that he hoped Tony would rediscover the Tesseract derived element as the technology of his time won't allow him to synthesize and utilize it as he wished. Tony later discovered that Howard hid the atomic structure in the diorama of the 1974 Stark Expo before rediscovering and synthesizing it. Howard's discovery ultimately saved Tony's life and gave him a new, better power source for his Iron Man armors.

Legacy
After being found in the 21st century, Steve Rogers often commented on how much Tony Stark reminded him of Howard.

When Steve Rogers walked through a hallway in an old SHIELD compound with Natasha Romanoff, the Captain glimpsed pictures of Howard Stark and many other old friends on the wall, lamenting that they were all gone.

The Truth Revealed
When Arnim Zola's consciousness was activated in his supercomputer form, he revealed to the pair that HYDRA was within SHIELD all along, secretly working in their ranks. HYDRA's Winter Soldier was responsible for the deaths of many famous icons, including Howard and Maria Stark, to which, Steve and Natasha were greatly astonished to hear. Later discovering that the Winter Soldier was in fact Bucky Barnes, Steve and Natasha opted against telling Tony the truth behind how Howard and Maria had died fearing he would murder Barnes if he found out.

Captain America: Civil War
During the signing of the Sokovia Accords, in 2016, Steve Rogers expressed happiness that Howard Stark had eventually married and started a family. Tony sardonically commented that Howard's endless praise of Rogers made the younger Stark hate the Captain.

Seeking revenge against Tony Stark for the actions of Ultron, the Sokovian colonel Helmut Zemo lured Iron Man, Rogers and Barnes to a Siberian HYDRA base. Here the colonel revealed to Tony how Howard and Maria had truly died. Enraged that Rogers had kept this information from him for years, Tony turned on both of them denouncing Rogers as a friend and attempting to murder Barnes to avenge Howard and Maria.

Tony ultimately lost the resulting battle as a result of the confined space and being outnumbered but claimed Captain America's shield stating the super soldier had betrayed Howard Stark's memory and the shield was Tony's property since Howard's death.

Quotes
"I'm here to show you... my ass. (laughs)"

- (Iron Man 2) Howard fooling around while filming for his Stark Expo presentation.

"Tony, you're too young to understand this right now, so I thought I would put it on film for you. I built this for you. And some day you'll realize that it represents a whole lot more than people's inventions... it represents my life's work. This is the key to the future. I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is, and always will be, my greatest creation... is *you*."

- (Iron Man 2) Howard Stark giving a message to his son, Tony.

"Fondue is just cheese and bread, my friend."

- (Captain America: The First Avenger) Howard Stark to Steve Rogers.

Trivia

 * The film Ant-Man introduces a bitter rivalry between Howard Stark and Hank Pym to the point where the latter wants nothing to do with Tony Stark. Tony's comments towards Scott Lang in Civil War suggest that Howard never took Pym seriously as Tony expresses no knowledge of who Hank Pym was.
 * Originally in Iron Man, Howard Stark was to be the main antagonist, and he would've been a corrupt and ruthless businessman who steals his son Tony's designs to weaponize them and sell them for profit, and become War Machine in the climax, which would presumably result in his defeat. This was unused, because Tom Cruise, who was intended for the role, cited the similarities to David Banner in the 2003 film Hulk. This culminated in the project being pushed from it's intended release in 2006 to 2008, with Howard rewritten as a posthumous character and Obadiah Stane being the main antagonist.