YouTuber and engineer Jake Laser has made a lot of functional, real-life Marvel superhero gear before. Such as these Black Panther sneakers, and these Spider-Man shooters that spray hand sanitizer. Now, Laser’s assembled a prototype of what is, perhaps, his most ambitious build yet: a collapsable Iron Man suit that can be stored in the form of a briefcase. And it is quite a piece of luggage.
Laser recently posted the above video to his channel, JLaservideo. The 20-minute-long video covers an extensive build process, which, according to Laser, took hundreds of hours to complete. It was also a particularly hard task for the ersatz-armor builder, because of an extensive amount of metal fabrication.
Speaking of which, Laser’s Iron Man suit—from Iron Man 2—is made of 100 pounds of cold-rolled steel. The engineer also says that the suit consists of dozens of individual parts; most of which must slot in with neighboring pieces.
The suit is so heavy I almost passed out during the final shoot😳 Over 100lbs of 16 gauge cold rolled steel..
— Jake Laser (@jlaservideo) March 13, 2021
Laser shows the final briefcase-suit, which is clearly the result of a serious amount of blood, sweat, and blisters, a little over 18 minutes into the video. And while it’s definitely a metallurgic work of art, it does seem like it nails the aesthetics a lot more than the functionality. None of the components, for example, seem to work automatically like the one from the movie. And the ones that do work are clunky and look like they induce mild pain?
JLaservideo
Regardless of the results of this particular suit, Laser notes this is just one iteration of the prototype. Certainly with a few more revisions, and tinkering, however, the suit could be a real boon for anyone going up against, say, somebody with a real-life Captain America shield. Like the one the Hacksmith built. Speaking of which, engineers who make IRL Marvel props need to team up more. It’s time for us to be able to shoot legitimate repulsors from our hands, dang it!