Iron Man director Jon Favreau says the San Diego Comic Con was the perfect location to debut footage from the action drama because that audience is who he has to please in order for Iron Man the movie to be a success. Thankfully for Paramount Pictures, Favreau and the film's cast, the audience responded favorably to the footage screened at the annual convention. In fact, the response was so positive Paramount Pictures execs told Favreau they need to get a trailer out right now.
Immediately after unspooling the footage, Favreau sat down for an interview with a batch of journalists to further discuss what audiences can expect from Iron Man starring Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Terrence Howard.
Why did you say yes to directing Iron Man?
“Why Iron Man for me? Avi Arad - who I met on Daredevil - he was talking to me about they’re getting the properties, they’re securing the rights to properties. I’d always been curious about Captain America. As a character I loved him. I loved the idea of a guy being frozen in ice in World War II and waking up now in the turn of the century and seeing who our allies are, who our enemies are, and what America is. There was room for a lot of social commentary and humor. But as far as the action goes, [this is a] much more challenging title. Iron Man, with the technology you have today, this is the first time you could make a movie about this hero that stays true to the vision of the books. You could depict what the suit could do in a way that you never could before.”
How do you get non-comic book fans interested in Iron Man?
“The biggest hurdle was getting the comic book audience to know that we got the right guy playing Tony Stark, that we’re handling the movie with the right tone, with the right humor, with the right personality, with the right look and we get the suit right. Because that’s the only people who know who Iron Man is right now: are the fans. Now it’s about educating the rest of the public.
What Transformers showed is that if you have enough visual interest on the screen, there will be a curiosity about a movie like that. People will go to see it. And Iron Man, although he’s a superhero and has all the wonderful aspects of the Marvel tradition of a conflicted, flawed hero, but you also have the layer of technology that’s going to… With ILM, it’s basically ILM’s been doing great work on Transformers, on Pirates of the Caribbean, they’re out there, that they’re going bring a visual interest to the suit and with the choreography. You got a little taste of it with the footage. You could cut a trailer that has nothing to do with what we all love about Iron Man, that would make every kid in America want to see this movie just because of the layers of technology and the fighting. And then the Marvel brand – don’t underestimate that. People want to see movies like that. They know they’re in for a wild ride when they see a Marvel movie.”
Is this movie going to be appropriate for kids who are Iron Man fans?
“It’s going to be PG-13. That being said, my son, who’s just turned 6, I would very comfortably bring him to the film. So as far as language, sexuality, stuff that’s difficult, violence that is, you know, like I had a hard time showing, like there are PG-13 movies like Van Helsing that I have to turn off when my kid’s watching. Even Daredevil was a little tricky to show him because it was made to be…it felt very violent at times. But the character was as well. In this I wanted to have something that the action was appropriate for all audiences, but I didn’t want to make it like a PG ‘family fun film’ because it was Tony Stark and Tony Stark likes to screw, he likes to drink, he likes to party and he likes to drive fast cars. And, you know, and Iron Man gets rough and tumble. It’s about a guy who’s ambushed in a convoy, in our case in Afghanistan. So there’s a way to treat that material where it’s not cleaned up too much for me, where I’ll enjoy watching it, but I wouldn’t feel irresponsible letting my kid see it. But it’s my kid. I don’t know. Not everybody’s kid’s the same way.”
Do you see the characters from the Marvel properties ever mingling together?
“I hope so. I mean, I don’t know how many Iron Man movies you can make before you sort of need to see the Avengers happen. You know, S.H.I.E.L.D., and there’s certainly Kevin [Feige] who’s, I don’t know if you’ve spoken to him yet, he is a fan, has an interest in it. Legally they’re getting into position where they can do it. There are different challenges from a business standpoint about doing that because it’s different making Ocean’s Eleven is a different business model than making a movie that Brad Pitt is starring in. So if they could navigate those waters, I think creatively it would make a lot of sense. It would be a lot of fun and I hope to be the guy who gets to do it.”
Did you do a lot in camera or was it mostly CG work?
“I did both. I used a lot of CG. But I think that to do CG effectively, you have to play a game with the audience where you show them something real and show them something fake, and the fake stuff should look real and the real stuff should look CG. And Stan Winston’s design was something where we could work with craftsman. If you saw the Mach One suit down there, you see a lot of details in it. That keeps ILM honest. And vice versa. If ILM could make this guy acrobatic and fly in the air like you saw, the suit can’t be so restrictive that it looks like you’re cutting. It can’t look like the Power Rangers when you cut from the people in the suits, they have to look like the same person. And I think you lose the audience emotionally if they don’t buy the transition between the two.”
Were you revising the script while you were filming?
“Oh yeah, yeah. Sure. Dialogue changed, we learned things about the characters as went, we refined the story on the set. But this is part of the process. It’s like the Marvel movies, they do that a lot where it’s more about the story and for me there’s always been a component of improvisation in movies I’ve worked on. I was lucky to have actors that could handle it, like [Terrence Howard].”
