Powerless Iron Man Forced To Deal With Life's Daily Bummers

Inside the Iron Man suit, Tony Stark is but a man. Sure, he's a man with billions of dollars and a bunch or really cool toys, but he's still a man. Take away the suit's powers, and he's forced to confront the mundane.

That's what L.A. photographer and designer Raffael Dickreuter was trying to capture with his photo series, "Iron Man Grounded."

"It was important to me to put him more in just common everyday situations many people could relate to," Dickreuter told The Huffington Post in an email Friday. "He can't fly, he is stuck in economy class like the rest of us."

Dickreuter created the project after Robert Downey Jr. turned down his request for a photo when Dickreuter ran into him earlier this year.

"It was a true Tony Stark moment but in real life," Dickreuter wrote on his website. "But that was also the moment it dawned on me that Iron Man and Robert [Downey Jr.] were maybe so high up at this point, they no longer had to care about the common man."

The encounter inspired him to make a project placing a powerless Iron Man in mundane, sometimes frustrating everyday situations. Dickreuter says he has no hard feelings toward the actor -- who obviously is busy saving the world.

Robert Downey Jr. shared one of the photos on Facebook.

Fans of the comic book and Marvel film franchises will note that in Dickreuter's art, the arc reactor that keeps Iron Man ticking is turned off.

The story goes that the experimental engine that powered the suit also kept Tony Stark alive by keeping shrapnel shards from piercing his heart. Although Stark had the shrapnel removed at the end of the movie "Iron Man 3," it's interesting to think about Iron Man living his life with a "broken" heart.

Dickreuter said the busted arc reactor is part of his work's "subtle message," which makes light of "our current obsession with superheroes who can do anything they want and are totally disconnected from the real struggles of society."