Iron Man 3 will actually be about Iron Man this time, plus an Avengers update

June 30th 2011, 11:01pm

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

A common criticism of IRON MAN 2 was that it may have been an effective prequel to THE AVENGERS, but wasn’t actually a very good sequel to IRON MAN.

That won’t be a problem with the third movie, which doesn’t have to lay cable for a whole future of Marvel movies and can put all of its attention back on our favorite womanizing billionaire and his engineering ingenuity. In an interview with Film Journal, Marvel’s main movie man Kevin Feige says: “Audiences will see that Tony Stark is going back into his own world. There will be acknowledgements to the events of THE AVENGERS and the character journey he took there, but he’s not going to be having tea with Thor and calling Nick Fury every five minutes.”

Previous reports also claimed IRON MAN 3 (which already has a May 3, 2013 release date) will be more of a Tom Clancy-like techno-thriller, and more self-contained than overloaded with secondary characters. LETHAL WEAPON writer Shane Black will be behind the camera and is still at work on the story with screenwriter Drew Pearce (along with assistance from IRON MAN two-timer Jon Favreau and the wealthy super-suited hero himself, Robert Downey Jr.).

So while cameos and supporting roles in IM3 may be kept to a minimum, every familiar face in the Marvel movie universe will show up in THE AVENGERS. “We’re mimicking what comic-book publishers have been doing for years and years,” explains Feige. “We’re making a big crossover event that brings all of these characters together to face something incredible and epic.”

And how will it escape the same unfocused fate of IRON MAN 2? “The first step in avoiding that was hiring Joss [Whedon, writer-director],” Feige says. “If you look at his body of work, he regularly writes for lots of characters. ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ may be called ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ but it’s really an ensemble piece and none of the characters ever get lost in the spectacle of whatever is going on.” (Whedon also successfully juggled numerous characters on “Angel” and “Firefly”, and in his “Astonishing X-Men” comic run.)

“The stuff we’ve shot [so far on THE AVENGERS] is cutting together spectacularly and it’s just the character interactions that we’ve done so far—we haven’t shot much of the action sequences yet. I think the end result is going to feel very, very satisfying.”