Geoff Boucher with the LA Times has posted some interesting quotes from interviews conducted with Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau while visiting the set of
Iron Man 2 some time ago. These quotes give a fairly good look at what it may have been like on the set of a potential blockbuster sequel to a blockbuster.
Favreau on the Double Edged Sword of success... “The challenges are to maintain the tone and the personality. You can’t fall into the trap of getting too precious with the material or taking yourself too seriously. You also need to escalate things appropriately. You can fall into a real trap with these things of telling the same story over and over again — playing it too safe and relying on familiar things — or just the opposite of being too ambitious and letting the plot become too baroque or cluttered with too many characters. In this case, we added people to change the dynamic of the core group. We didn’t want to do something that felt like another episode of a sitcom. There was a very comfortable dynamic with the characters after the first one and there’s a temptation to just become episodic when that happens.” Downey on what he needed to avoid making the sequel... “I needed to remember not to forget. I didn’t want to forget the way we made it happen last time, which was very seat-of-our-pants, very synergistic and open to finding the big ‘ah-ha’ moments…. We said last time that we couldn’t imagine that we’d get so lucky to get a shot at doing it [a second time in the same fashion]. It was tantamount sometimes to making a crazy, cosmic double entendre. Our thing is order out of chaos. The hours are weird but it pays pretty good.” Downey on revealing Iron Mans identity... “It was one of the big keys to our success. You’ve got to break the mode as many ways as possible. That, by the way, on the day, was an ‘alt.’ That scene in the first movie, I mean, where I tell everyone that Tony Stark is Iron Man, that was [a departure from the script] where Jon said, ‘Just do one take where you look right down the barrel of the camera and say it.’ We decided that it made it more interesting. And the first one, where I stuck to the cards, that didn’t go so well; I start talking about my dad and get real stoic and seem traumatized. So we went in a different direction. And that’s what we do here more than anything is that we try to defy expectation, if only for ourselves and our satisfaction as fans of these kinds of movies. It’s kind of Pickford-Chaplin thing of the lunatics taking over the asylum. Look, you imagine this film is going to have a certain amount of success whether we do it in an interesting way or not just because of last time. The first will get people to come see the second. We felt more motivated to countermand that [moviegoer] tendency. I feel like this is our generation’s chance to sit in the catbird seat and make movies for the present and future generations…we’re trying to make it really deep. Or maybe we’re trying to make it seem really deep. Half the time we’re just trying to entertain ourselves.” Downey on his trust in Favreau... “Here’s the thing. We realized pretty early on with this second one that there was not going to be much of anything elegant about the way we did this movie. It was essentially going to be a screaming, wild-eyed bar fight just to get that naturalism that we got in the first one…there’s all these thing you’re juggling and some of them are on fire. It all goes back to Jon and I. That first screen test and me bringing everything I had to bear on it and getting the opportunity for this role. Jon and I are the same exact guys but we’ve also changed a lot internally; some of that was prompted by external things like success and a deep feeling of accomplishment after connecting with an audience that embraced this whole thing. There’s a possibility to have legacy with this thing. We’re not fooling ourselves – it’s entertainment for a general audience — but to me that is the most exciting realm of creative activity. There is a possibility of a legacy.”
ComicBookMovie.com, and/or the user who contributed this post, may earn commissions or revenue through clicks or purchases made through any third-party links contained within the content above.