Iron Man Good EW preview article on Iron Man

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http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20192634,00.html

'Iron Man': Summer's first Marvel?
The would-be blockbuster takes big risks, from its production financing to its casting of Robert Downey Jr. as its superhero. Soon, we'll know if it'll reap the rewards to match

IRON MAN With a reported budget of $180 million, the film will need to be one of the summer's biggest hits if it's going to pay off for Marvel's production company
Industrial Light & Magic

By Jeff Jensen

Sporting a devilish goatee and casual designer threads, Robert Downey Jr. takes a seat inside his trailer on the set of Iron Man and unzips a pouch containing a nice fat cigar. He snips off the end of his stogie but doesn't light it. He's too busy talking (and talking) about the thrill of playing a superhero. ''I remember running into Keanu after he got back from The Matrix, and he said, 'Brother, it feels like I've been on another planet,''' Downey says. ''Well, I feel like I'm on Planet Iron Man. And it's the greatest.''

If you sense that the 43-year-old former Hollywood bad boy and onetime Oscar nominee (Chaplin) is enjoying his moment, you'd be right — especially considering he could have a hit on his hands. Adapted from the long-running Marvel Comics series, Iron Man tells the story of Tony Stark, a brilliant munitions mogul who becomes a crime-fighting knight in high-tech armor after a brush with death. The film, directed by Jon Favreau (Elf), costars Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jeff Bridges, and is stuffed with enough F/X eye candy to give fanboys retinal diabetes. For Downey, Iron Man completes the arc of a remarkable, slow-building comeback since 2002, when he was released from a court-ordered rehab stint for a seemingly untamable drug addiction. ''It was a risky piece of casting, but all the more intriguing because of it,'' says Marvel Studios production president Kevin Feige. ''Like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, it's a move that takes this movie to another level.''

To be clear, Iron Man isn't an ironclad blockbuster. For starters, the character lacks the bigger-than-comics profile of Spider-Man and Superman. The film is also Marvel's first franchise effort since becoming an autonomous and fully capitalized production company. Prior to Iron Man, Marvel relied on studios to fund its films. Now the company's paying for the films itself; that means huge rewards if Iron Man and Marvel's other summer release, a reboot of The Incredible Hulk, hit, and a huge loss if they don't. With a reported budget of $180 million, Iron Man will need to be one of the summer's biggest hits if it's going to pay off, and recent creative woes on Hulk suggest Marvel's ambitious new leadership might be struggling through a learning curve.

Nonetheless, Downey is clearly psyched for a chance to prove himself anew, not to mention join Hollywood's brotherhood of action heroes. ''I'm an actor because I'm crazy about movies,'' he says. ''I've had occasion to hang out with Bruce Willis, but when I do, I don't think of him as Bruce Willis. He's John McClane and that's all there is to it, because I love Die Hard. All the guys I've grown up with in this business, all my peers, they've all gotten their superhero ya-yas out, except me. Until now.''

Iron Man might not be as familiar to mainstream audiences as Batman — he may even lack the ubiquity of the thunderous Black Sabbath rock song of the same name (everybody now: ''I. Am. IRON MAN!'') — but he's been a fixture of Marvel's pulp fiction since 1963. His origin story is very much a thing of its time: Tony Stark, weapons designer, anticommunist zealot, and hard-partying celebrity capitalist, goes to war-torn Vietnam to check out his technology in action. He gets gravely wounded and captured but MacGyvers together a suit of armor designed to kick Vietcong ass. (The movie substitutes Afghanistan for Vietnam.) Once back in the States, Stark commits to battling tyrannical evildoers everywhere. Call him the original Scud Stud. ''Stark is something of a weirdo compared to other superheroes,'' Downey says. ''Whereas most of them are dealing with some extraordinary transformation, he's very self-indulgent, a womanizer, and politically unsound by most people's standards. And yet, my understanding is that Iron Man got more [female] fan mail back in the day than any other Marvel character.''

Iron Man's had a fair number of Hollywood fans, too, although their admiration hasn't done much to make him a movie star. Since the mid-1990s, several studios have attempted to develop an Iron Man flick, attracting the interest of stars Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage. But in 2005, after New Line failed to mount a version with director Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook), Iron Man's rights reverted to Marvel. Flush with mini-major aspirations — plus $525 million in start-up cash from Merrill Lynch and a 10-picture distribution deal with Paramount — Marvel moved to put Iron Man into production, recruiting Jon Favreau to steer the adaptation. The Swingers star-turned-director seized the opportunity, he says, because he was drawn to Iron Man's point of difference: Tony Stark's not a teenager (e.g., Spider-Man) but an adult, changing his ways and becoming a superhero. ''I'm in my 40s myself now, so it's nice to be dealing with a cast — and a character — that I can see eye to eye with,'' Favreau says. To bring Stark into the 21st century, Favreau updated the story's geopolitical context and softened the comic book's jingoism by injecting Stark with ''What have I wrought?'' angst.

Next came Downey, who lobbied for the role, whipping his body into action-hero shape and even agreeing to do a screen test. ''In my offscreen life, I'm totally into skydiving, martial arts, military history, but that doesn't jibe with my onscreen persona,'' he says. Ironically, the offscreen stuff that Downey is famous for — substance abuse, jail, rehab — actually helped him get the job. ''It certainly factored in,'' Favreau says. ''Stark is a guy who has lived life, and who has a change of heart about how he views himself, the world, and his place in it. To go with a lead that's too young — which you're often coerced to do — just wouldn't work.'' Still, Marvel Studios president Feige says Downey wasn't an easy sell to his superiors. ''I had to negotiate a minefield of questions when I made that pitch,'' Feige says, laughing. But Downey's recent track record of clean living and steady, impressive work (16 films in five years) allayed concerns. ''His past was ultimately a nonissue,'' Feige says.

Besides, casting Iron Man was easy compared with cobbling together the movie's script. Favreau began work with two newbie screenwriters but then brought in the scribes behind Children of Men to give the narrative some gravitas. He even got a script polish from Charlie's Angels scribe John August. Despite all that, Favreau began a four-month shoot last March without a firm script. Much rewriting was done on set, and much of it was driven by Downey, who's highly regarded for his in-the-moment inventiveness. ''There was definitely a pattern to Robert's choices,'' Favreau says. ''He was committed to making this as unique and real as possible.'' Downey says that movies now are often visually dazzling but are ''as dull as a bag of hammers.'' He wasn't about to let F/X outshine story. ''We set the bar high every morning,'' he says. ''And most of the time we met or exceeded it.''

Iron Man will give Downey a major career boost, provided it opens strong and garners some good reviews. Whatever the outcome, though, you sense that Downey's already cleared the highest hurdle. ''I'm not as prone to reckless abandon and self-centeredness as I used to be,'' he says. ''I literally have never had a better working experience in my life. And in many ways, it's an experience that's been a long time coming.''

 

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great article