Jon Favreau’s Iron Man – which introduced the world to Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark aka Iron Man, helped establish the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But did you know, the Marvel company was trying to make it into a movie since the 1990s? It was only in 2006 that this superhero feature – which became a huge blockbuster and single-handedly resurrected RDJ’s career, released – a time when Batman was the reigning movie superhero.
For those who don’t know, before the Robert-led superhero film was released, Marvel was hardly anywhere to be seen on the big screen – it was the DC era aka Batman was everywhere. And this Batman era was all thanks to Christopher Nolan’s very successful films Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008). In a past appearance on a Netflix show, Jon and Downey opened up about coming out during such a time and when they knew the film could succeed. Read on.
During episode 2 of season 1, volume 1 of Netflix’s The Chef Show Jon Favreau had over a few members of the Avengers crew. There, he spoke about Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man entering Batman’s world and being only second best to it, saying “It was the Batman world. Batman was huge. Even in our success, we were still second fiddle.”
Robert Downey Jr, who was a guest in this episode of Jon Favreau’s show, explained that they were hesitant about coming in so soon after the success of those Nolan films. He said, “It’s not like we wanted to come out within two weeks, we wanted to come out in a different season. We wanted that much space to maybe have a shot.”
Talking about when they felt Iron Man had a shot, Jon revealed it was at a Comic Con. He said, “It was really at Comic Con, after we showed the footage and Robert showed up. We felt the wave cresting and that we were gonna surf our way if we did everything right for the next year.” To this RDJ added, “I just remember going to, like one of the midnight shows and seeing a single mother with her baby in a carriage in the aisle just going like this while she was watching. And I said, ‘I guess we hit the right quadrants with this one.”
Catch Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr chatting about this and more (while enjoying a wonderful meal with their friendly team – including Kevin Feige, Anthony Russo, Tom Holland and Joe Russo), on Netflix.
While Jon directed the first two Iron Man movies, he featured as Happy Hogan in several Marvel movies including the ones he directed, Iron Man 3, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Far From Home and Spider-Man: No Way Home. Robert Downey Jr played Tony Stark aka Iron Man in all his character’s stand-alone films, all the Avenger films released till now – Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
He also had an uncredited cameo appearance in The Incredible Hulk and appearance via archival footage in Spider-Man: Far From Home and the Disney+ series Loki.
For more stay tuned to Koimoi for more such fun and candid throwback conversation of favourite stars, films and more.
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