Can you talk about casting Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane? Do we see Iron Monger? Jeff has said that their relationship is like a mentor.
“Here’s the bottom line, we’re making a Marvel movie and it’s the first time Marvel is making its own movie, so I want to stay true to the books. I’ve been working on this thing for a year and it’s going to be another year before it’s out, and if everybody figures everything out along the way, by the time you see the movie you’ll feel like you’ve seen the movie already. So we try to put in enough twists and turns and things in there, have something that you guys don’t know as we go forward.
But, by the same token, because it’s Marvel I want to stay as true to what the broad strokes of the comic books are. Is he a mentor to Tony Stark? Yeah, that’s sort of the relationship that we found between Jeff Bridges and Robert Downey that would be good. Is it still Obadiah Stane? Yes, it is. Are there certain expectations people might have who’ve read the comic books for several decades based on who it is? Are they going to be waiting for another shoe to fall? I think they probably will, and we’re not going to change the universe so much that to the purists it will seem like we betrayed the underlying truths of it. If you’ve done your homework on the books, it’s going to serve you well when you go into the movie because we’re doing it too.”
Is the action a big undertaking for you?
“It is, and we have a great second unit. They’re probably on the other set blowing things up. We’ve been very lucky to have a group of people that are very good at developing and calling the action. I don’t want to sit here and pretend that I have huge action experience. I think I can tell a good story. I think cinematically I can make something compelling. I’m enforcing rules on the story where it doesn’t feel like two completely different films, and there is the possibility that it goes from swingers to power rangers, and everybody’s like, ‘What am I watching?’ So the trick is to bring up the human story to a world that feels like it’s a comic book, it fits into the genre, and then keeping the action aspect of it - I wouldn’t say restrained - but hold it up to a certain standard of reality that you have a broadness that you expect in a comic book movie. But it’s not like just do whatever the hell you want because it’s a movie and everybody just wants to eat popcorn. I think in my body of work I’ve held it to a certain standard. And now in making something that has to be appealing to a much larger audience than I’ve really hit before, I want to make sure that we’re giving everybody what they want and making it fun and exciting, but also making it something that I could be proud of.”
Are you surprised by the freedom you’ve been given by Marvel?
“Yes, there are certain things that Marvel is very meticulous about, and there’s a definite formula to the way action is done. Then when it comes to the scenes between the people we have very, very good actors. Marvel has been very involved, but they are a small crew. You have Kevin Feige and you have Jeremy Latcham, who are sort of our executives on the project. And they’re here, because Hulk hasn’t started yet. And so we could sit in the trailer with the Marvel guys, with the producers and with the actors and talk about what the scene should be based on, what we’ve shot and what we’ve learned. So in a lot of ways there was a lot of freedom to try things different ways, get what we knew we need to get, to get the story to work and then bring a certain humor sometimes or a humanity to it, so there’s a real sense of freshness and discovery in this project.”
How hard is it for you to get these great actors back for a sequel or are they already locked into that?
“If their experience is good, which it has been so far based on what everybody has told me, maybe they’ll say something different to you guys, but I know that I’ve made it fun. I’ve made it something where hopefully the work is as good a quality as they would get on any movie. I said to Robert, ‘What do you want to do in your career now?’ He said, ‘I want to make movies that are good and that people are going to see.’ And it seems very simple, but it’s a pretty profound statement. Actors want to be in movies that are good, that they’re proud of, but there’s nothing more frustrating than making a great movie that is a featured title on Netflix. You want to do a movie that is going to be part of your culture. Pirates of the Caribbean, you reference that and it’s like The Sopranos, everybody knows what you’re talking about, and you’ve impacted lives, you’ve created a cultural ripple. And that’s something that you can’t get always with an indie film. Sometimes it happens, like Swingers, usually it doesn’t.”
How do you respond to the obsessive reaction to this film?
“I welcome it, because I’m right in there. It’s not a scary, weird looming presence. I go online and I look at stuff and I see what people are saying, people are confused about this, and there are certain things that they’re confused about that I want them to be confused about, and there are certain things that they are confused about that I don’t want them to be confused about. But it’s a game you could play with the audience. But I think if they know that you care and are paying attention, and that there are choices that you’re making because you’re making them as a choice and not because you don’t know what you’re doing, they like it. So, to me, buzz is great. I would have killed for people to care this much about the last movie I was on. What you don’t want is to just disappear, because you work so hard. I’ve worked two years on this movie. I’m going to have gone from a pregnant wife to a walking baby by the time it takes to make this movie, and that’s a mindblower. And one bad weekend, something happens, you’ve got everything on one dice roll. So I love to have the interaction, I love to know that they’re out there. I love to know that after working a 14 hour day and things feel bleak and did I get everything I need, you go online and you see people saying, ‘Right on,’ even if it’s a little thing. It’s a big deal, man, it’s not easy doing this s—t. I love it, but it’s hard.”
