Favreau Talks Iron Man
Jon Favreau, who will direct the upcoming film version of Marvel Comics' Iron Man, told SCI FI Wire that his movie will have a lot of action and wil also look back to an earlier half-man, half-machine. "I want to see a lot of stuff blowing up," Favreau said in an interview at the Saturn Awards in Universal City, Calif., earlier this week. "That's part of it. I've always been a big fan of RoboCop. And using today's technology to create a hero that has that kind of, you know, magnitude could be a lot of fun. There's also a whole geopolitical aspect of it that you you don't really see with other superheroes. And the politics are a little more complicated. So it deals with a lot of issues. I hope that we could, on the one hand, make it an enjoyable movie, [and,] on the other hand, explore certain subject matter that you wouldn't normally see in a comic-book movie."
Favreau will helm Iron Man, Marvel Studios' first independently financed project, which will now be distributed by Paramount. Arthur Marcum and Matt Hollaway (Convoy) will write the screenplay, centering on alcoholic billionaire Tony Stark, who is disabled by an accident and must create a suit of armor to sustain his life. (Favreau will chronicle the process of making the movie in an Iron Man blog on MySpace.com.)
Favreau said he would remain faithful to the comic's mythology while presenting an origin story. "Just my sensibility in adaptations, I really ... I put a lot of weight on ... the stories that have been told," he said. "Now obviously you have certain aspects that lend themselves better to movies, and you're trying to tell a story that's been told over many many issues in the comic books in an hour and a half. So there's going to be some consolidation, and I think that tonally, the comic book has changed a great deal."
Favreau added: "I think part of the fun of the first film is that you have the origin story. And there's been several tellings of it. And the early stuff from the 60s is kind of simplistic. I don't think that I want to play up the campy, corny aspect of comic books. I think I want to get into sort of the deep character work that the books have been so effective in presenting."
Fans will see various incarnations of Iron Man's familiar red-and-yellow armor, he added: "Hopefully, we'll get to see a couple of suits of armor in it. Hopefully there's a progression. That's part of the fun of Iron Man. He had a lot of different looks." No one is cast yet, he said. Patrick Lee, News Editor
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