The means Latcham describes it, the scene in query was meant to play as comedic. Abu, the vicious army chief, must do laundry, after which, when uninterested in the chore, power Tony Stark to do it for him. From a narrative and tonal perspective, such a scene does certainly really feel largely pointless. Tony was already being held captive. Watching his captors do laundry, after which watching Tony do laundry, would not assist the movie. Latcham mentioned the scene with “Iron Man” govt producer Kevin Feige, and it appears the latter was adamant about leaving the laundry scene out of the film. By Feige’s measure, it will be so absurd as to derail your entire movie. Latcham mentioned:
“There are still three or four deleted scenes … that I don’t think will ever be released because they were so bad. I remember Kevin saying to me in 2012, when I was like, ‘Should we put the Abu doing laundry deleted scenes out?’ And Kevin was like, ‘No. We can never put out Abu doing laundry. People will know we don’t know what we’re doing. It’ll be embarrassing if they see these scenes.’ But there was a whole runner in ‘Iron Man’ where Tony Stark was doing laundry, and I don’t think they’ve ever come out.”
As it stands, Favreau’s movie runs 126 minutes and is fairly impeccably paced. It appears that further scenes of Tony being held hostage, whereas maybe including to his harrowing hostage expertise, would have delayed the superhero mayhem that audiences got here for.