It's easy to forget what an achievement Iron Man is, when the odds were stacked against it.
Disney didn't want to hire Robert Downey Jr. as Stark because of his drink and drugs convictions.
It's not hard to blame them as he'd missed out on a couple of roles because of insurance issues and fired from Ally McBeal after an arrest in 2001.
John Favreau had just directed Zathura, which was a box-office failure, but he'd directed the hit Elf, so he ended up on a list of directors that were good and available.
Marvel Studios didn't really know what they were doing as they'd sold off the Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men rights.
They didn't even have a script at the start and even on the days of filming, they had to improvise a lot of scenes.
Jeff Bridges has said:
“We would show up for big scenes every day and we wouldn't know what we were going to say. We would have to go into our trailer and work on this scene and call up writers on the phone, 'You got any ideas?' Meanwhile the crew is tapping their foot on the stage waiting for us to come on."
Improvisations were made, with Bridges, Downey Jr., and director Jon Favreau acting out basic scenes. “Jon dealt with it so well,” Bridges said. "It freaked me out. I was very anxious. I like to be prepared. I like to know my lines, man, that's my school. Very prepared. That was very irritating, and then I just made this adjustment. It happens in movies a lot where something's rubbing against your fur and it's not feeling right, but it's just the way it is. You can spend a lot of energy bitching about that or you can figure out how you're going to do it, how you're going to play this hand you've been dealt. What you can control is how you perceive things and your thinking about it. So I said, ‘Oh, what we're doing here, we're making a $200 million student film. We're all just f***in’ around! We're playin'. Oh, great!' That took all the pressure off. ‘Oh, just jam, man, just play.' And it turned out great!"
“We read the script, and it wasn’t really right, you know? We had two weeks’ rehearsal, and we basically rewrote the script,” he said. “And the day before we were going to shoot, we get a call from the Marvel guy, saying, ‘Oh, no, no, no. None of this is right.’ So we would muster in my trailer and rehearse while the guys were in the studio tapping their foot, saying, ‘When are they going to come?’ We were still trying to figure out the [scenes] we were going to shoot.”
The film wasn't supposed to be funny, but RDJ's tone as Stark made it a lot more humorous than they planned:
Favreau: “I don’t even think they knew it was gonna be funny, I remember when we first screened it, [Marvel Studios President] Kevin Feige was like, ‘Whoa, this is pretty funny!’”
RDJ also improvised the final line of the film - "I am Iron Man" as the original script kept his alter-ego secret.
Feige: “That success (revealing Stark as Iron Man) inspired us to go further in the trusting ourselves to find balance of staying true to the comics and the spirit of the comics but not being afraid to adapt and evolve and to change things,”
This ability to change the film versions from the comics lead to them ditching the Dr. Donald Blake alter-ego for Thor.
Feige: “It’s a fine line, If you’re changing something for no reason, that’s one thing, but if you’re changing something because you want to double-down on the spirit of who the character is? That’s a change we’ll make. Tony Stark not reading off the card and not sticking with the fixed story? Him just blurting out ‘I am Iron Man?’ That seems very much in keeping with who that character is.”
“I think it did inspire us on all the movies,” Feige said. “What I love now — 20 movies in — is how fans expect the MCU to change and adapt. They expect us to be inspired by the comics as opposed to being slavishly devoted to them.”
Disney didn't want to hire Robert Downey Jr. as Stark because of his drink and drugs convictions.
It's not hard to blame them as he'd missed out on a couple of roles because of insurance issues and fired from Ally McBeal after an arrest in 2001.
John Favreau had just directed Zathura, which was a box-office failure, but he'd directed the hit Elf, so he ended up on a list of directors that were good and available.
Marvel Studios didn't really know what they were doing as they'd sold off the Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men rights.
They didn't even have a script at the start and even on the days of filming, they had to improvise a lot of scenes.
Jeff Bridges has said:
“We would show up for big scenes every day and we wouldn't know what we were going to say. We would have to go into our trailer and work on this scene and call up writers on the phone, 'You got any ideas?' Meanwhile the crew is tapping their foot on the stage waiting for us to come on."
Improvisations were made, with Bridges, Downey Jr., and director Jon Favreau acting out basic scenes. “Jon dealt with it so well,” Bridges said. "It freaked me out. I was very anxious. I like to be prepared. I like to know my lines, man, that's my school. Very prepared. That was very irritating, and then I just made this adjustment. It happens in movies a lot where something's rubbing against your fur and it's not feeling right, but it's just the way it is. You can spend a lot of energy bitching about that or you can figure out how you're going to do it, how you're going to play this hand you've been dealt. What you can control is how you perceive things and your thinking about it. So I said, ‘Oh, what we're doing here, we're making a $200 million student film. We're all just f***in’ around! We're playin'. Oh, great!' That took all the pressure off. ‘Oh, just jam, man, just play.' And it turned out great!"
“We read the script, and it wasn’t really right, you know? We had two weeks’ rehearsal, and we basically rewrote the script,” he said. “And the day before we were going to shoot, we get a call from the Marvel guy, saying, ‘Oh, no, no, no. None of this is right.’ So we would muster in my trailer and rehearse while the guys were in the studio tapping their foot, saying, ‘When are they going to come?’ We were still trying to figure out the [scenes] we were going to shoot.”
The film wasn't supposed to be funny, but RDJ's tone as Stark made it a lot more humorous than they planned:
Favreau: “I don’t even think they knew it was gonna be funny, I remember when we first screened it, [Marvel Studios President] Kevin Feige was like, ‘Whoa, this is pretty funny!’”
RDJ also improvised the final line of the film - "I am Iron Man" as the original script kept his alter-ego secret.
Feige: “That success (revealing Stark as Iron Man) inspired us to go further in the trusting ourselves to find balance of staying true to the comics and the spirit of the comics but not being afraid to adapt and evolve and to change things,”
This ability to change the film versions from the comics lead to them ditching the Dr. Donald Blake alter-ego for Thor.
Feige: “It’s a fine line, If you’re changing something for no reason, that’s one thing, but if you’re changing something because you want to double-down on the spirit of who the character is? That’s a change we’ll make. Tony Stark not reading off the card and not sticking with the fixed story? Him just blurting out ‘I am Iron Man?’ That seems very much in keeping with who that character is.”
“I think it did inspire us on all the movies,” Feige said. “What I love now — 20 movies in — is how fans expect the MCU to change and adapt. They expect us to be inspired by the comics as opposed to being slavishly devoted to them.”
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