This week, Entertainment Weekly is running an exclusive interview with IRON MAN 3 star Robert Downey Jr., where he’s discussing a variety of details on the upcoming superhero sequel. Thus far, Downey Jr. discussed a key sequence in the film, writer/director Shane Black‘s storytelling, his “movie club” during production, and how Don Cheadle‘s James “Rhodey” Rhodes/War Machine/Iron Patriot will be portrayed in the film.
On the approach to action scenes after three iterations of Iron Man movies:
“We’ve just been talking about one sequence – the top-secret name is the Boot/Glove Sequence, I can tell you that, just between you and me – it’s where Tony only has one gauntlet and one boot and he has to escape multiple captors. It’s really fun, dude. We’re taking everything from his first gauntlet test in the first movie up through the most extreme stuff we thought up for Iron Man 2 and The Avengers and pulling on all of it and making this one big, extended challenge of physics.”
On the IRON MAN 3 “movie group”:
“It was a group of us going to the Cineplex and blocking out a theater on the weekends and taking in John Toll [the two-time Oscar winner and Iron Man 3 cinematographer] and taking in sometimes a ton of people and sometimes less. We do something that involves movies and our love of movies…. One was [a movie that Toll shot] the Wachowskis’ film Cloud Atlas. We were impressed with how cohesive the direction was, and obviously everything that John shot was amazing. We saw Flight, which was great, and before that it was Argo, which was also kind of cool. It’s nice knowing that you can to theater every weekend and see something good. And it’s great to see what people are doing and to get excited about it.”
On Don Cheadle‘s role as Rhodey/War Machine and his dynamic with Tony:
“Since I was just talking about Flight and Don is on my mind, I’ll start with him. Rhodey is much more in the dead center of things. He’s much more dynamic. We’ve made this decision that while Tony is a technical guy, he’s not really a trained guy. There’s a lot of fun to be had with Don because he’s really good with hardware and he’s a martial artist, so it’s been really fun exploiting this possibility of Tony having moments like the one in Avengers, like the one with Cap where he decides, “Oh screw it, he probably knows what he’s doing.” So there’s a lot of that and a lot more fun and a lot more depth to Rhodey this time around.”
Pretty cool stuff. It’s great to see Downey Jr. in the role of Tony Stark. In my opinion, it will be the defining role of his career, even though he’s done plenty of other great projects. I just get the feeling that he loves the part and he’s repeatedly shown himself to take ownership of it, which is just awesome. He’s exceptionally loyal to the brand and he acts as the frontman to the entire team of Marvel actors. His charisma and passion for IRON MAN is enough to get me in theaters. Not like I needed an excuse, of course, but it helps to know I’m watching someone who genuinely cares.
IRON MAN 3 is slated to wreak havoc on May 3, 2013.
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