Iron Man (2008) - Forging the MCU: How Iron Man Reinvented Robert Downey Jr, Marvel, and Cinema

Episode Summary:
Aaron and Brash dive into the 2008 classic Iron Man, exploring how Robert Downey Jr.’s personal comeback paralleled Tony Stark’s transformation, and how Marvel Studios’ bold gamble on a troubled actor reshaped modern cinema. From the film’s ground-breaking HUD design to its real-world military collaboration, we unpack the lessons Iron Man taught us about reinvention, risk, and fandom.

Topics:

• Origin story of the MCU and Marvel’s $525 million collateral risk
• Casting Robert Downey Jr. and parallels with Tony Stark
• Jon Favreau’s “likable asshole” vision and on-set improvisation
• Innovative heads-up display inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey and the iPod
• U.S. Air Force partnership for authentic military portrayal
• Community hot takes from Threads and Reddit
• Legacy of the post-credits scene and franchise building

Key Takeaways:

• Reinvention through adversity: RDJ, Tony Stark, and Marvel all bounced back stronger after near-disasters.
• Calculated risk pays off: Marvel bet its character rights on one film and one actor—and won.
• Grounded spectacle: Jon Favreau balanced larger-than-life action with real-world details for emotional impact.
• Tech meets cinema: The suit’s HUD married Apple’s minimalist interface with cinematic flair.

Quotes:

“Betting on Robert Downey Jr. was the riskiest decision Marvel ever made—and it changed everything.”
 “They wanted Tony Stark to feel real, like a flawed genius who fights his demons”
 “They built the suit’s HUD after studying the iPod’s clean interface and Kubrick’s 2001 visuals to ground the tech in reality.”
“Collaborating with the U.S. Air Force gave them the authenticity audiences didn’t know they needed.”

Call to Action:
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Links & Resources:

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Apple Podcast Tags:
Marvel, Iron Man, MCU, Robert Downey Jr, Tony Stark, Jon Favreau, Marvel Studios, Superheroes, Film Podcast, Geek Freaks Network, Fandom Portals Podcast, Movie Analysis, Comic Book Movies, Pop Culture, Behind the Scenes

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Chapters

• 0:00 From Rehab to Superhero: Casting Downey
• 15:54 Introduction to Marvel's Risky Venture
• 36:15 Iron Man Origins and Production Challenges
• 55:31 The Legacy Begins: Redefining Superhero Cinema
• 56:05 Marvel's Bold Gamble with Studio and Star
• 1:14:05 Behind the Scenes: Script Improv and Challenges

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

that the reason he advocated for Downey was because that the best and worst moments of Robert's life have been on display in the public eye and he had to find an inner balance to overcome obstacles that went far beyond his career. And he said that's literally Tony Stark. Hello everybody and welcome to the Fandom Portals podcast, the podcast that explores how fandoms can help us learn and grow. I'm Aaron and, as always, I'm here with my co-host, brash Brash. What's going on with you today? How are you? Why aren't you wearing the pyjamas I bought you? That's an Iron man line.

Speaker 2: 0:43

It sure is.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Yeah, buddy, that's a good one, and the reason you said it is because we're doing Iron man from 2008, the very first movie in the MCU. We're ending our Marvel month with the way that the MCU all started. It's been a big month for us Marvel-wise. How do you think it's gone so far?

Speaker 2: 1:02

Good, a lot of Marvel. I've even watched a bunch of other Marvel stuff because we're just watching Marvel. So it's been a lot and I'm glad or, after Thunderbolts, I suppose I'm going to be glad to maybe have a little bit of a break from Marvel, with also Daredevil wrapping up as well.

Speaker 1: 1:18

Yeah, same as me. I think it'll be a good palate cleanser after Thunderbolts and then we'll have a bit of a break before, obviously, fantastic Four comes out, which we're all very, very keen for. But, guys, before we get into what we're going to be learning about in this podcast this week, about Iron man from 2008, we're going to do our gratitudes. I've had a pretty good week, so it was very tricky for me to find a gratitude, because I'm grateful for lots of the things that I do have. But I am grateful this week for snacks, because watching all these Marvel movies with some good snacks, especially around Easter time, if people celebrate Easter, there is no shortage at the moment of snacks, and that's also like first world problems, I guess. But chocolate eggs, man, really great to eat on the couch in front of a Marvel movie watching Iron man, save the world, and you're just stuffing your face with chocolate and getting larger and larger by the second. But comfort food, man, that's what I'm grateful for. What about you?

Speaker 2: 2:11

I'm grateful for good graphics.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Yeah, we were talking about this before.

Speaker 2: 2:15

Give me more.

Speaker 1: 2:16

Tell me why.

Speaker 2: 2:16

Well, I love good storytelling and I love video games and I love when the two are together and when it pairs with good graphics, it just makes it like it's.

Speaker 1: 2:26

It's like a cinematic movie that you're involved with yeah, it increases the immersion because I currently playing um clear, obscure exhibition 33 and it's fantastic yeah, I walked in to do the podcast today and the music was awesome in the soundtrack, but then also I looked at the screen. I was like, holy crap, is this a game? Ps5 man, it's just next generation of graphics.

Speaker 2: 2:50

It's so good oh yeah, it's absolutely fantastic and I love this game so much so far. It's it's like a blend of, like your final fantasies and your dark souls. It's just right up my alley. Quite cheap as well. We're talking about too. Yeah, yeah, actually yeah for a for a brand new game and for how good it is.

Speaker 1: 3:05

Yes, it's cheap lots of opportunities for RPG character building too.

Speaker 2: 3:10

We looked at also so if you're into that kind of thing, guys, our D&D sort of, our D&D love sort of took over. We were like going through all the skill trees yeah, and all the abilities and things, oh man.

Speaker 1: 3:21

But yes, we digress, we digress. Anyway, yes, this week we are doing Iron man from 2008. It is the catalyst for the MCU that started it all, and we thought what better way to end our Marvel month than to finish it with Robert Downey Jr and Jon Favreau? So this is a movie about a man who's held captive in an Afghan cave and he's a billionaire, an engineer, and his name is Tony Stark, and he creates a billionaire, an engineer and his name is Tony Stark, and he creates a unique weaponized suit of armor to fight evil. But before that, he made weapons and distributed them across the world and thought he was doing a good job. But apparently he was doing such a good job that the other side had his weapons as well. So great for business bad for morality?

Speaker 2: 4:01

Leveling the playing field, I guess.

Speaker 1: 4:03

Well, yes, and, yeah, that's how the movie sort of starts out. But in this episode of the podcast you are going to learn about how Tony Stark and Robert Downey Jr proved it's never too late for a comeback and why their parallel journeys made the character and the MCU unforgettable. We're also going to learn about the massive gamble that Marvel Studios took on Iron man they risked everything on a troubled actor and a not-so-sure thing of a story and how this bold move didn't just save their careers, it rewrote the rules of modern cinema forever. Lots of learnings today. As we said, this is directed by Jon Favreau, it was written by Mike Fergus Hawk Ostby and obviously created by Stan Lee, the legend himself, who does have a cameo in this movie. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 4:47

He does he does, and starring Rash, robert Downey Jr, jeff Bridges, terrence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow. Now can you tell me what all four of those actors have in common? What all four have in common, mm? Besides appearing in an Iron man movie, the first hero movie? I suppose I think so as well, but no, I was thinking more along the lines of every single one of those four actors. The four top-billed actors are all Oscar-nominated or Oscar winners. Huh, so we had Jeff Bridges, who was obviously a multi-Oscar-nominated actor, for the Contender and Starman in 2001 and 1985, respectively. And then we had Terrence Howard, who was the first cast and also the highest paid actor on this movie, and he was coming in hot from Crash in 2004 and Hustle and Flow, which he was actually Oscar nominated for as well. Gwyneth Paltrow was the only one of this cast who had actually won an Oscar for Best Leading Actress in Shakespeare in Love, nominated for Chaplin in 1992. And, funnily enough, he got a really meagre salary for this role. Do you know how much he got?

Speaker 2: 5:56

Was it only like in my mind, it says $600,000.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Very close. It's $500,000. He got $500,000, but there was also some back-end deals that he was able to include in his remuneration as well, you might say, and basically that was Marvel Studios insurance policy for him. So if he stayed on the project and he did a good job, he'd get extra awards, because he also had a very tumultuous past, which we'll get into in the podcast today as well.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Budget of $140 million, grossed $585 million worldwide. So we talked last week about how a budget might inflate due to word of mouth, and this one definitely did so. It got $98 million in its opening weekend and then from there, through word of mouth and how good this movie was everybody was talking about talking about it skyrocketed to 585 million dollars and basically reignited marvel studios. That's the movie that we're looking at today and we're going to get into some of our hot takes. This is where we discuss our first thoughts on the media and unpack the boldest opinions, from what surprises us to what split the room. We'll also highlight your hot takes from Threads, instagram and Reddit's community. So if you want to get involved, make sure you go and check out the show notes below and you can do that there as well. Okay, brash, which first see Iron man.

Speaker 2: 7:17

Actually, I would have seen it in the theaters, but it would have been in Charlottesville. It's either that or I was waiting for it to come out on DVD Because, to be honest, at the time I didn't have high hopes. Yeah, nobody had faith in the movie. Hey, I think I still went and saw the movies and I was like, oh, this is actually pretty good. Yeah, I don't think I really had high hopes for it, especially coming off of Hulk, yes, which came out not too long previously, but, but changed my view on it after watching it. But yeah, no. So I think I did see it in the cinema but, honestly, it was too long ago. I can't really remember when.

Speaker 1: 7:53

Well, that was pretty much the same thing for a lot of people, because I think Iron man was definitely a B-list character is what it's been fondly called before and not many people knew who Iron man was, to the point where Marvel Studios actually released three little animated clips publicly as a marketing campaign to tell everybody that Iron man wasn't just a robot, it was a guy inside a suit, named Tony Stark as well. So it educated the public as they were getting prepared for the movie. Myself, in 2008, I used to work at an animal shelter, so I used to work really early hours. And in 2009, when I actually had the DVDs, I came home after a shift, watched Iron man and the Dark Knight in the same afternoon. It was literally like the best afternoon of my life. So it was funny to me to actually remember that and think that these two movies, the Dark Knight and or you know, yeah, the Dark Knight and Iron man came out in the same year. That's just insane to me to think about how good that year of cinema was. But I think for me I knew Iron man from the cartoon, but other than that, absolutely no idea. But he was one of the few characters that Marvel still had the rights of when they were going to make this movie and as a result of that, you know they were able to use him as their springboard.

Speaker 1: 9:08

But let's look at what our Reddit and threads have to say. All right, so if you're a person that wants to contribute to our Reddit and threads, you can do so in the show notes below. The links are all there, because every single time we do a movie, we put up a post that says what did this movie teach you? And I put up a picture of the iron man poster all the way back in 2008, and we have on our threads that nicholas timothy brown lee says that they learned even the most loyal co-workers can betray you. Good lesson to learn.

Speaker 1: 9:37

Red sabbath 13 learned that the military industrial complex can be controlled by a capitalist after he has a near-death experience. New factory classics says you can't assume your ai assistant won't one day be its own sentient android that will fall in love with you, a witch, and have a ship of athesius moment. So treat it well when you are building your combat armor, powered by your own heart reactor. That is insightful, and I also tell you that you know. Um, what is it? Something is 2020, what do they say?

Speaker 1: 10:10

uh, hindsight, hindsight, that's right, it's 2020, exactly um dn vaughn 2.0 said that the mcu hates the no kill rule. And I said what's the no kill rule? Because I didn't know what the no kill rule was.

Speaker 1: 10:23

And he said it's a rule where superheroes don't kill yeah people or things, and I said, well, that must have been an old rule, because a lot of them do that now and it's like a rarity that they don't. Yeah, I think that was crazy because, yeah, I can think of multiple scenes. The one in my head immediately comes when, uh, iron man goes back to the city that yensen's from or the village that Jensen's from, and he just goes and blows up all the terrorists there.

Speaker 2: 10:44

All movies are still getting like superhero movies, getting bold like that, like even man of Steel, yeah, yeah, that shocked me because he's meant to be like the golden boy. He's the boys guy, he's Baby.

Speaker 1: 10:59

Blue. I know, see, that's the one that I think divided the community on the no-kill rule, because everyone's just like we love Henry Cavill but we don't love that. Yeah, I was shocked. And then Trey Fisher 101 says that you should never trust Jeff Bridges. Old Obadiah Stane, he looks good. He's a bald man. He does look good. That took like 10 years off his life and I saw an interview with him and he was talking about how he was thinking about doing it and you know, the people in hair and makeup were like shaving his head down shorter and shorter and shorter in increments. So he was not fully sold on the bald head. But then it got to his hair being about an inch long and he was like just get rid of it all and he liked it. He said he'd always wanted to do it and this was the first time that he was able to try and I think the beard makes it too.

Speaker 2: 11:44

It's like a very strong masculine sort of presence with that yeah, like a bald person without a beard sort of just looks weird. Yeah, it looks like Bruce Willis yeah or as my grandma used to say Bruce Willis is probably like one of the only people I can that pulls it off like really well, like Vin Diesel. Even Vin Diesel, yeah, he's like. Have you seen with hair, though? Oh bro, he looks better.

Speaker 1: 12:07

He obviously looks better without hair, and Dwayne Johnson as well. Man yeah, all those men look better bald. But yeah, with Vin Diesel, my nan used to say that he looks like a boiled egg with eyebrows. Oh yeah, sorry, vin Diesel, if you're listening, my name wasn't a fan or isn't a fan.

Speaker 2: 12:26

No, I suppose they all look pretty good.

Speaker 1: 12:29

All right, let's jump over to our Reddit page. So we have UnluckyBird2601 that says that the character of Iron man is awesome and that Robert Downey Jr was born to play the role. And then we had Terry496 that said Downey definitely killed it. I think that in hindsight that is definitely the case. Everybody looks at Robert Downey Jr as the catalyst for a lot of things in the MCU At the time. We'll go into a little bit about Robert Downey Jr later in the podcast as well.

Speaker 1: 12:59

But it was also pretty well received, yeah, even due to his tumultuous past. But I think that everybody knew that his struggles mirrored Tony Stark's and that was a big draw factor as well. But I would also like to say that when people say that he was born to play the role, I do agree. But I think that also kind of discredits a lot of the hard work that he did to actually perform the role, embody the character, and he's gone on to say lots of times in lots of behind the scenes stuff that it was definitely a creative and collaborative process to bring that character to life so many times. So yeah, I definitely agree.

Speaker 2: 13:32

He was the perfect casting choice for that role.

Speaker 1: 13:35

I think so too. All right, and then we had Gubba Toriel that said the DC universe would no longer rule the superhero genre of movies. So that's what they learned from Iron man. And I think that's kind of true, because before that they obviously had the Tim Burton run of Batman movies. They had the Superman movies that came out in the 70s, 80s and 90s, for DC and Marvel was kind of starting to get its legs in terms of the Spider-Man movies that came out with Tobey Maguire and also the X-Men movies that were directed by Bryan Singer. So they were starting to get a little bit of traction. But the funny thing about those movies was they actually weren't putting any money into Marvel Studios' pockets because they'd sold the rights to the characters to.

Speaker 1: 14:17

Sony and 20th Century Fox. So yeah, I definitely agree. I think that this really set the sale for Marvel in terms of being able to make money for some of their own characters again, but then also, uh, kind of flatlined DC for a little while.

Speaker 2: 14:32

Yeah, or even still now, like they've had some DC, has had some sparks of genius.

Speaker 1: 14:38

Yeah, I think the outlier in that is definitely the Nolan trilogy of Batman that we can just sort of. There is definitely that for DC going on yeah the. Nolan trilogy of Batman that we can just sort of. There is definitely that for DC going on, yeah, but I do agree.

Speaker 2: 14:49

I think that there's not so much spark in the DC as there used to be, because, like it's like for me watching DC movies now, it's sort of like I watch it and you know when there's like something you're forgetting, it's just not to be a tongue or just that sensation, just like you've almost like or a thought that you've almost got, but you can't quite get it.

Speaker 1: 15:10

That's like how I feel when I watch dc.

Speaker 2: 15:11

That's a really good way to put it, man, because it's almost there. It's almost there. It's got everything that you got you like it's just not, it's just missing something. Yeah, it's just missing something, and that's how I feel about pretty much every single dc movie that's coming out like it's just missing that something yeah, I wonder what uh gun's influence is going to be.

Speaker 1: 15:23

It'll be interesting to watch that and comment on it later on. But we also have this comment actually blew me away from Reddit. It said you should love more, as in that's the username of the person you should love more. Says that my past addiction had no say in my future, and I think that was really poignant and also I thank you for sharing, because that's literally the journey that Robert Downey Jr goes on and that also Tony Stark goes on in this movie, and that one hit me so much so that we actually kind of are going to touch on a lot in our episode today. So that was our community A lot of people praising Iron man.

Speaker 1: 15:59

Actually, I will read out this one. There's always one. So there was some people that weren't throwing ultimate praise towards Iron man on our Reddits. It says only use for questions, that's his name. Says that people will praise the shit out of something that is undeserving if people spread the word enough, and I kind of disagree with that because I mean I kind of agree, but in this instance, in instance that's a good point, because I do also.

Speaker 1: 16:29

I do agree that people can jump on hype trains a lot. That's definitely a fact of the movie going industry. But I don't think it applies to iron man, because one mathematically the box office numbers it made 98 million in its first weekend and then ended up making 585, like that's word of mouth and people wanting to come and rewatch in the movie cinemas. But then also just watching the movie myself and looking at it and thinking that not only is it a movie that teaches you lots of things, it's entertaining. It was groundbreaking. This is a movie that like solidified itself as something new and different and it defeated the odds against people that really weren't expecting anything from it, from the people that were making it and the people that were involved. So I definitely think that it is being praised for good reason. So only used for questions. I think that in this case, in iron man's case, not so true. But that person did go on to say that, um, they think that iron man three outclasses iron man one, and I'm not sure if I agree with that either.

Speaker 2: 17:25

Yeah, and I think we've already spoken about this, and you disagree with me, but I fucking hated both Iron man 2 and Iron man 3. Yeah, yeah, to me those were just misses. Yeah, and it's all because of the bad guys. Up until Thanos came along, marvel had a bad, and it wasn't so much the casting actors Thanos I think Loki in Avengers was good.

Speaker 1: 17:50

That came before Thanos.

Speaker 2: 17:51

Oh yeah, sorry, Loki sort of Thanos, because Thanos was also in that movie, but Loki's an anti-hero. Yeah, it was like like Thor, like Thor 2, like with the dark elf.

Speaker 1: 18:02

They definitely had a big miss. In terms of villains, I think the best one out of phase one would be Red Skull. I love it. He was a good villain in the first phase of the MCU. Wish he had played a bit bigger role, yeah, or even continued on after the fact.

Speaker 2: 18:16

Yeah, Instead, he just dies and becomes a ghost on fucking some planet. Yeah, Guarding the um dies and becomes a ghost on fucking some planet. Yeah, guarding the soul stone, but yeah, like Whiplash in the second one, as I said earlier, I enjoy Whiplash.

Speaker 1: 18:30

I'll go on the record to say I enjoy Whiplash. I love Whiplash, the character and you also like.

Speaker 2: 18:35

Mickey Rourke I love.

Speaker 1: 18:36

Mickey Rourke, the actor. Never the two shall they meat the writing like whiplash.

Speaker 2: 18:41

He's meant to like. He literally names whiplash like something that's like like I don't know, it's a play on words because he's whips, but like he's also meant to be. Like like and Jake jumping around swinging off shit with his whips and like just movement, mickey Rourke. Well, I picture movement. Mickey Rourke is not in my picture yeah, he was a boxer man.

Speaker 1: 19:01

Mickey Rourke was a boxer, yeah, he was a boxer.

Speaker 2: 19:03

But also with boxing, yeah, you gotta move your feet, but it's in like a, a small area, yeah that's true.

Speaker 1: 19:09

That is definitely true, I think, for Mickey Rourke. In that movie, specifically Iron man 2, he perfected the the villain's slow walk towards the hero in a menacing way because that's the only speed he can go is slow, yeah, like especially after the racing scene, when he whips Tony Stark's car in half and he's just slowly walking towards, like if he actually hit it into like third gear or something, he probably would have got to Tony before he put his armor on.

Speaker 2: 19:33

Oh yeah, it has to have that sort of dramatic, like Sailor Moon dress up.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Oh yeah. Can I just say, though, you cannot deny that in Iron man 2, the different ways that they employed his getting on with Tony's suit tech, that upgrade was good. The briefcase where he put his fists into it and pulled his arms into it, oh yeah that was amazing, come on, man.

Speaker 2: 19:58

No, like so. Two and three, they were amazing with the Iron man part, but what let them down for me was both the like as much as I hate to say about Mickey Rourke and Whiplash, but like the villains, and because of the weakness of the villains, it made the sort of story feel weak. Yes, I can agree with that, and the same like the second one. And I hated what they did with the Mandarin, how they, how they fucked around and made a big joke about the Mandarins, uh, about the Mandarin, and like how they sort of they retconned it by doing Shang-Chi, shang-chi, yep, and they were sort of retconning it a bit and how, like, making the Mandarin, he was an actor the whole time and stuff like that, but then the real Mandarin was, um, was his face that turned, made people glow and explode and shit. From the third movie yeah, I can't remember his name Cause it's so forgettable Justin Hammer. No, justin Hammer's Hammer Tech. Ah, right, okay.

Speaker 1: 20:56

Yeah, we've, we've both forgotten it. Yeah, yeah, I remember being angry about the way that they handled the Mandarin, but looking back at it, I think it's very difficult to handle the Mandarin because he seems very comic book-y in terms of how he is origin-wise, like he is an all-powerful warlord with ten magical rings that originate from a spaceship that comes from another world that he repurposed the technology for, and then he's also a very heavily caricatured version of the chinese people. So it's like how can they?

Speaker 2: 21:27

that's a really sort of touchy area that they probably didn't know how to creatively they sort of did that with um, the actor guy ben kingsley kingsley yeah, he was amazing in um chengchi um, but um, old trevor slattery but uh, yeah, even that like that and you'll never see me coming Like. I loved all that, but to me I think they missed opportunities with Iron man 2 and 3 with their bad guys, all right.

Speaker 1: 22:03

This is our Fandom Fact Face-Off segment, where the hosts go head-to-head with the trivia about the Focus movie, learning new facts along the way. The host with the least amount of points at the end of the month loses and has to take the winner to an all-expenses-paid trip to the movies. This month, however, brash and I have done a Marvel team-up and we've earned enough points to send one of our lucky mailing list people to the movies. So we already have our winner for that giveaway and they're going to be announced at the end of this episode. But if you wanted to join our mailing list, which is at wwwfandomportalspodcastcom, you will receive updates on the happenings at the Fandom Portals Podcast once a month and you'll also be the first one to know about any future giveaways that we do. So lucky winner to be announced at the end of the podcast.

Speaker 1: 22:46

This phantom fact face off, brash, is just for funsies, funsies. I'm gonna go first. Are you ready? Okay, okay. So this movie, iron man one made in 2008, had a very heavy presence of this particular branch of American culture and history, you might say, and it is one of the few times that this branch of history, slash culture, was heavily supported in a superhero film like this. Do you know which element of American culture, slash history, really supported Iron man in 2008?

Speaker 2: 23:27

I've got two. Okay, either like military or industrial.

Speaker 1: 23:31

Yes, it's the military, so specifically the Air Force. They actively supported the film's production. It was said that the Pentagon was very excited about Iron Man's portrayal of the military in such a positive light that they granted the production unprecedented access to all of their hardware and facilities. They even let them use the Edwards Air Force Base and they trained actors like Terrence Howard on using various different equipments and how officers behave and the protocols for military and the speech patterns and things like that. And they actually even used real life F-22 Raptor jets in the film and some of the pilots and actual military personnel actually appeared in the film also.

Speaker 1: 24:09

And they also followed military guidelines in regards to weapons and armor depictions, which made that realistic. And they avoided portraying the military as an overly fantastical element, which I think was important, because Iron man is a weapons developer for the military. So if it was a fantastical element and Jon Favreau has gone on record to say that anything in a superhero movie is so larger than life, so whatever he could do to bring it back down to the real world, he would try to do and in making the military a real life sort of presence, especially in 2008 when there is a very big cultural knowledge of the war in Iraq that was going on. I think that was really important for them to do.

Speaker 2: 24:51

Yeah, I like that point you made about the quote from Jon Favreau bringing it back down to the Earth. I think that's why I think Marvel has had such success, because they're using these fantastical creations of Stan Lee that are always, like it seems, larger than life, but it's always rooted in the real. Yes, and I think, instead of making some over-the-top, blown-out sort of realistic elements, help just us normal, unsuperpowered people like resonate more with the movies, yeah, and the characters too.

Speaker 1: 25:26

I think it's really easy for a superhero movie to have an unrelatable protagonist which really kills the movie. But these marvel movies, these mcu movies, have a really great way of connecting us with the human side of this superhero and also the human side, or the real life side, of the world in which they live in, and that was one way that they did it. So I thought that was good. That's a point for you, brash.

Speaker 2: 25:48

Which also is probably why I think, for me, I liked Thor 1 better than Thor 2. Yes, because Thor 2 was a bit over the top.

Speaker 1: 25:59

That was like world hopping and grounded in mythology, really in the Norse mythology, in terms of the, the, the tree of life, or something like that. What's the Norse mythology for? The tree, the branches and the?

Speaker 2: 26:12

yeah, each branch is. Each branch is a different realm. Yeah, yeah, so I think I think you're right there whereas, like the first one, he like your introduction to Thor is he gets banished to Earth and he loses all his powers, which is a great way to make a godly character relatable to people, exactly.

Speaker 1: 26:28

Yeah, really great job. All right, your turn.

Speaker 2: 26:30

Okay. So Jeff Bridges is usually one who's very meticulous about scripts. He likes to have a script, he likes to read it all the way through, memorize it word for word. In Iron man this wasn't the case as a lot of things were ad-lib, but he did say it took the pressures off and made it a lot more fun.

Speaker 1: 26:53

But he says a quote about why I did read this. Actually, I watched him say it when I was doing my research for this and he said it was frustrating at first, but he said after collaborating with a few of the actors. And he said it was frustrating at first, but he said after collaborating with a few of the actors and talking about it, he said it was almost like making a 200 million dollar student film which was. And then he said that they all got to just sort of get in his trailer and talk about what they were going to shoot for the day and you know, downey would play a different character and John would play different characters and they'd talk each other through the scene. John Favreau would be on the phone talking to his writer buddies to see what they would shoot for that given day and he said it was kind of good to just jam.

Speaker 2: 27:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:32

And just relax in that place, because he said there was lots of frustrations. But then when he realized that he kind of let it all go and he said that that also kind of hopefully portrays on the screen, which I think it did. But I can imagine how it would be, because he is a very talented actor and he's got a very big breadth of cinematography behind him yeah and he obviously has a way of working and going into this project.

Speaker 1: 27:52

It was completely different. So, yeah, good on him for sticking through it in that way, because I know that a lot of other actors may have been a little bit more disgruntled yeah, yeah, there was one. Oh, was it yeah is one of your questions. Okay, if not tell me that?

Speaker 2: 28:07

yes, yes, so 200 million dollar student film was the quote he used very good for the um for a while. The quote he used to describe filming the movie.

Speaker 1: 28:15

Yeah lovely, okay, so this question here, uh, I I have to ask this one because I really want to talk about it. So, so we know that Marvel had some tumultuous issues in terms of its rights for its characters and, as a result of that, the rights to Iron man floated around various different production companies. As it was doing that, there was lots of different people attached to the film to play the title role of Tony Stark. One of those people was Nicolas Cage. Another person was, uh, timothy oliphant was another one, but there was one particular actor in the early 1990s and, oh sorry, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, who was very, uh, heavily attached and even developed a script in association with stan lee to be a part of this iron man movie but, as a result of creative differences, decided to exit the leading role. Do you know who that actor was?

Speaker 2: 29:07

I believe I do, because I've seen the memes and the things that I thought about it Was it Tom Cruise?

Speaker 1: 29:15

It was. It was Tom Cruise and he said that he wanted a significant amount of creative control over the project. And because he wasn't allowed that and his script was it was more tonally toward the action blockbusters of the late nineties, early two thousands, as opposed to this spy thriller genre mishmash of of action comedy that Marvel was sort of heading towards, and because of that he decided to leave the project. But as a result we did get Jon Favreau attached who championed for Robert Downey Jr, which we have said is a very amazing and awesome casting choice. Obviously Robert Downey Jr had his personal struggles with addiction, which mirrored Stark's journey at the time, and there was that reckless sort of playboy and that responsible hero that was at odds with each other. And Cruise may not have captured that authenticity as well as Downey did.

Speaker 1: 30:14

But Jon Favreau actually went on to say that the reason he advocated for Downey was because that the best and worst moments of Robert's life have been on display in the public eye and he had to find an inner balance to overcome obstacles that went far beyond his career. And he said that's literally Tony Stark. He said Robert brings depth to that character that goes beyond the comic books and it's more than the comic book character just having troubles in high school or they can't get the girl. So he wanted Tony Stark in this movie to be a likable asshole. And everybody especially during Downey's constant yo-yoing into rehab and prison but everybody was always they were like vouching for him. They wanted him to do really, really well and I think that is the exact same thing that he wanted people to feel for Tony Stark and it worked out well. It did, it did All right, your go Brash.

Speaker 2: 31:06

So as we were talking about before. People had some troubles adjusting to the sort of craziness that was this movie in their amount of ad-libbing. But one person struggled the most because of Robert Downey Jr's sort of quick-wittedness and sometimes struggle to try and quickly think of something to respond back to him whenever he'd make up one of his lines. Do you know who that person was?

Speaker 1: 31:34

I think, given the hindsight of it all, I want to say Terrence Howard, because he obviously didn't appear in Iron man 2, so there may have been some disagreement there. My other guess would be Gwyneth Paltrow, because she I think she actually came off an acting break, Like she had children or something and she came off an acting break, and because I read somewhere that she took this role because it was the studio was very close to where her children went to school so she could spend a lot of time with them and as a result of that she was kind of just dipping her toe back into the game of acting. So maybe that could have been a struggle for her. My other guess would be terrence howard, so I guess I could lock one in and I'll say terrence howard that's culture you're right in the second one flip the coin.

Speaker 2: 32:12

Yeah, she, because, um, because he'd ad-libbed so much, he'd asked for a multitude of like reshoots, retakes of like the same scene. And she, she struggled that because every time he changed up and make something up new, she'd have to try and figure out something else to do, because she had no idea what he was going to say. Like she'd be like uh, uh and have trouble like thinking of thinking up something to respond to him because he'd want to do so many reshoots, because he'd say something like oh no, I don't think I like how that says let's do it again, do it again, say something different. And each time she also like I don't. Like she probably didn't have to, because if it was all sort of like a similar line, she probably could just say the same thing as a response, but I think, trying to go with the flow of it all, she was like trying to also.

Speaker 2: 32:57

She can't do things, but I struggled because he had no idea what he was going to say.

Speaker 2: 33:00

There's only so many lines you can come up with for the same, for the same scene god bless Gwyneth Paltrow yeah, yeah there's, uh, one, one um scene in the movie where it's towards the end when sort of Iron Man's hitting on Pepper a bit and she's like, oh, remember that night. Um, yes, and she describes the night like meticulously, and romantically. And then she's like and then you went to get me a drink and never came back and left me on the roof by myself and I was like, huh, she remembered that but didn't remember that she was in Spider-Man.

Speaker 1: 33:34

Oh, good old Wes. Yeah, I think that that is just a testament to her character in this film, because I really like how they played her off and I read somewhere that Jon Favreau wanted her to be almost like the 1940s sitcom women that were alluring and attractive but also kind of funny and could stand up on their own and had their own sensibilities and things like that as well.

Speaker 2: 33:55

I loved her Petrilla Pepper in the first one, I think as she went along she sort of lost that zip, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:06

I love her introduction scene where she's there saying uh, I've picked up the dry cleaning for you. Uh, there's a car waiting outside to take you anywhere you want to go and this this lady yeah, this lady thinks that she has the audacity to go and talk to pepper pepper.

Speaker 2: 34:20

Pepper.

Speaker 1: 34:20

Potts Like that, and she's literally wearing this shirt of Tony Stark from the night before. From a one night stand From a one night stand, yeah, and she thinks she's got the inside scoop. And Pepper's, just like I, also occasionally take out the trash when required and she's like, will there be anything else? And yeah, Gwyneth Paltrow's delivery in that just absolutely amazing.

Speaker 2: 34:38

Yeah, because amazing. Yeah, because I love how she becomes like boss bitch. I love that. But, like I said, in doing so it sort of lost her sort of cheeky charm. Yes, and like, if you watch, like the animated series, pepper's always got that cheeky charm. Yeah, she sort of loses that and becomes a bit more stern and just business focused, yeah, which which she kind of has to do because she's running the company.

Speaker 1: 34:58

She's running the company while, while tony the company, while Tony is out Garmenting yeah, being a hero, I guess.

Speaker 2: 35:04

But yeah, I sort of miss that sort of zippy, sort of zesty, sort of Pepper Potts.

Speaker 1: 35:10

I also read as well or saw in a making of for Iron man that her first scene that she shot was the ballroom scene and she said she'd just come back from having kids and she was wearing this open back dress in front of lots of people and she was really nervous. And she said that it kind of played into the role, because Pepper was nervous at that time too and she was struggling to keep up with Robert. But she said she also really wanted to work with Robert. It was like on her aspirations list, so she was really happy to be able to get to do that too. Did you know that one of her first roles was as young Wendy in Hook? Yes, yeah, yes, that was like her third role, acting role, and she was a young girl. Yeah, anyway, shout out Gwyneth Paltrow. All right, here is my question. I got that wrong, didn't I? So there is a very ingenuitive piece of cinematography in Iron man, all of the Iron man movies.

Speaker 1: 35:57

Whenever you see Iron man on screen, there is always a really awesome piece of ingenuity that they used in the cinematography in terms of the heads-up display that iron man has when we're seeing his face inside the suit, and there's all the different sort of uh computer icons moving around. That was really hard to achieve because, uh, it sort of sit sat between this niche of computer generated images and visual effects, where they weren't just rendering 3d objects, they were actually making 3d objects float around in space. Uh, it was also hard to achieve because they they kind of had to get these objects to display a sense of, they had to display a sense of depth within the helmet and it was just really tricky to pull off. But if you'll notice, the, the heads-up display actually increases or changes as the marks of suits changes as well.

Speaker 1: 36:52

And the creators of of this visual effect were inspired by two things. One of them was Dave's helmet from 2001, a space odyssey where you can see him putting in computer inputs and it's flashing up on his curved interface on his helmet and it sort of shows along his face and you are able to see Dave's reactions and things like that as well as the effects on the computer screen. So they're inspired by that. But there was also a really important piece of technology that came out in 2000. And man, do you know what that was?

Speaker 2: 37:22

Short answer I have no idea. Long answer something maybe with VR.

Speaker 1: 37:28

No, that was well, well after, but it was actually the Apple iPhone and the iPod. So the interface of the Apple iPod with the circular design where you could quickly click on something and hit into a subroutine, click the song that you wanted and then get straight out that circular dial that they used in the Mark III suit was actually inspired by that interface on the Apple iPod. So you can see that Tony can control his HUD display in three ways he can hear things coming from Jarvis, he can control them with his eyes or he can activate them through his own voice. So you will also see that heads-up display is turning a wheel and selecting one thing and then popping new information up on his screen, and the beautiful part about it is that it never obstructs his face. So we can always get the visual emotional resonance from the scene from Robert, as we need to as well. So they use that compact, state-of-the-art technology that Apple was bringing out that really featured in its simplicity, to influence the heads-up display.

Speaker 1: 38:31

Yeah, yeah, I thought so, because one of the biggest things that's a problem in superhero movies is when they're being their human self. It's really easy for the audience to relate to the character, but every single superhero wears a mask and as soon as they put that mask on and sometimes they go through the most emotional scenes when they're wearing their mask, but you don't see any emotion on the human's face because of the mask that's obscuring them. So Jon Favreau wanted to avoid that and really wanted to play into how nuanced Robert Downey Jr was with his facial expressions and give life to Iron man while he was in his suit, because so many people thought that he was just a robot instead of a man inside a suit. So they used that technology, which has become a staple in the MCU now for uh, for that purpose.

Speaker 2: 39:17

Let's get into your next question the ending of the movie was actually meant to be changed and could have drastically changed the rest of the Iron man movies going forward. But yeah, there was a part in the movie that was meant to change and it would have been a pivotal for one of the characters in this movie going forward and could have changed a lot of what Iron man 2 and Iron man 3 were going to be.

Speaker 1: 39:41

Is it a moment that happened in the movie that?

Speaker 2: 39:44

was going to be changed.

Speaker 1: 39:45

Yep, I know, at the very end Robert Downey improvised the line of I am Iron man, yeah, and that actually was a breaking of the tradition for the secret identity trope for superheroes, because that was happening all through Spider-Man.

Speaker 2: 39:58

Fun fact, when Coulson was like oh, we're going to say that Iron Man's your bodyguard, blah, blah, and he's like nah, that's a ridiculous idea. That's actually how, in the comics, iron man got away with his dual identity Iron man was his bodyguard.

Speaker 1: 40:15

That is actually true, yeah, very well done. Another different oh, is it got something to do? I know at the end of the movie, terrence Howard, who plays Rhodey, looks at an Iron man suit and said next time, baby. And then he never got that. Next time, no, nothing to do with Terrence Howard. I don't know this one then.

Speaker 2: 40:30

So Jeff Bridges actually said that originally Obidus Dane was not meant to die and that he was going to possibly there's a possibility of him returning in the future Iron man movie. I think I did read something like that as well because he or somebody said that they were going to open up the suit and he was going to be gone.

Speaker 1: 40:51

Yeah, and then initially Obadiah Stane was going to be the big villain for the second movie and the villain for the first movie was going to be the Mandarin. But due to the amount of risk Marvel was already taking with Robert Downey Jr and the studio this one being its first ever studio financed film they didn't also want to then risk making the Mandarin the main villain, because he was just too hard to adapt to a modern audience as well. So, yeah, I don't. I think I kind of would like that.

Speaker 2: 41:21

I kind of would like that too, actually to keep Obadiah Stane involved, yeah because I like Obadiah Stane?

Speaker 1: 41:27

because, as we talked about before Tony Stark or Iron man movies, they don't really have very good villains. In this movie, in Iron man 1, obadiah Stane's probably the best villain that Iron man has across his trilogy. But I like him not because he's a good villain, but he actually represents the part of Tony's life that he's trying to forget and avoid. He and he's that constant recurring fake facult and the fortune that he's made on destroying other people's lives through his weapons technology. That's literally the embodiment of Obadiah Stane standing there, and that's why I think, even though this movie doesn't have a villain, it has the iron monger at the very end. But I don't really watch Iron man and think that this climax to this movie is the best thing about the movie yeah.

Speaker 1: 42:09

I like Obadiah Stane because of what he represents to Tony and I think if they carried that through then he would constantly be reflecting and looking at that choice that he made to turn his company in a completely different direction and I think that's really central to the character. So I really would have liked if they kept him going across the trilogy or at least all number two.

Speaker 2: 42:30

And he could have been supporting the shadowy backing of someone like Hammer, yeah, or?

Speaker 1: 42:38

even the real Mandarin, because he was actually double dealing in the movie. It wouldn't be a fast stretch to think that he was already giving weapons technology to the Ten Rings. So why couldn't he continue to do that? To rebuild a fortune underneath the eye of Tony Stark in secret, gaining power and accumulating that wealth and then coming back to Because he could have been still selling, doing black market deals and building himself back up again.

Speaker 2: 43:07

The one thing I do wish is I wish because, realistically, no one knew who was in Ironmonger if he had have just gotten out and escaped, and the only people who knew he was Ironmonger was like Tony Pepper and Dana Circle and so like SHIELD. And the SHIELD who aren't like law yeah, like proper law. He could have gotten out and they could have accused him, but if-.

Speaker 1: 43:34

That's a better thing, too. He could have been hiding in plain sight, and that would have been awesome, because-.

Speaker 2: 43:38

And then he could start up his own company and it would be sort of like going in separate directions. So Tony goes off into his planet saving direction and arc reactor technology and then in, like an anime series, he could have started his own staying company, staying company or staying industries, and he could be in the weapons, the new weapons dealer that Stark Industries used to be.

Speaker 1: 44:08

Realistically that would work as well, because whenever somebody who's at the top of their echelon vacates in anything, it creates this massive vacuum and all of the underling technology companies would have been scrambling to get that top spot. Technology companies would have been scrambling to get that top spot. So who better to get that top spot than his former ally becomes competitor in Obadiah Stane, who would have the know-how and the technology insight through all the dealings that he's and the contacts as well that he's had with? Yeah, I think that that could have worked really, really well. And Jeff Bridges is, as the villain, like a very strong on-screen presence. There's more they could have done with the Iron Munger.

Speaker 1: 44:47

I agree. Good point, brash, that's awesome. All right, let's get into our set secrets. This is where the hosts look behind the scenes of the Focus movie to give you a little more information. All right, brash, for this one.

Speaker 1: 44:59

I really wanted to talk about the fact that this movie, for Marvel Studios, was a massive, massive risk. Initially, this movie was born out of the fact that Marvel in the mid 2000s was actually bankrupt. Comic books and cartoon series even though they can definitely make a really good opening animated sequence with excellent music, like they did for X-Men and also with the Spider-Man animated series Great at that, but not so good at the business deals because by the mid 2000s they'd sold off all their major characters to other studios. So in 2005, marvel decided that they're going to form their own studio and they're going to be distributed by Paramount Studios, and the next few movies that they were going to be making would be financed all on their own. So they actually took a loan out from Merrill Lynch, which is an American bank, and as collateral they posted the rest of their character rights, so characters like Thor, captain America, the Hulk and Iron man, who they retained they actually put them up as collateral for a 525 million dollar loan to make these movies.

Speaker 1: 46:17

Now, when they did this, paramount only handled the marketing and distributing and not the production costs.

Speaker 1: 46:23

So Marvel still had to pay production costs to make their movies and, honestly, if Iron man failed, marvel would have lost the rights to all of their characters and the landscape of cinema would have looked completely different than it does today.

Speaker 1: 46:40

Because, if you think about it, different than it does today, because, if you think about it, in the early 2000s, fox had what did Fox have? Fox had X-Men and the Fantastic Four and Sony had Spider-Man, and it was said that Marvel actually didn't make so much money from that intellectual property, even though, especially Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 made over a billion dollars. So, because of the deals that had been done in the past through the company, it was actually really hurting them now and Marvel really wanted to start up this risky shared universe plan and as a result of that and through leaders like David Maisel, ike Perlmutter and Avi Arad, who was the head of Marvel at the time, they backed the strategy, even though they were having internal doubts, and because of that we have the MCU. So I thought that that was really it was like a big, massive risk to use the characters that you're known for as collateral for a loan in a movie industry that had no guarantee of success.

Speaker 2: 47:42

Yeah, it was really risky, especially that time, because what only a couple of years prior to that, was the Hulk yeah, which wasn't good.

Speaker 1: 47:49

Which which, which interesting? Yeah well, they kind of knew there was the potential, because blade was good in 98 and then, or it sort of sparked.

Speaker 2: 48:01

I don't think a lot of people actually knew, though that blade was marvel though.

Speaker 1: 48:05

Yeah, yeah. And then in 2000 they had the x-men movie that came out, that you that that had a pretty big celebration surrounding it. But again, marvel didn't make that much money from those movies because they had sold the rights to the characters to the other companies.

Speaker 1: 48:21

So, yeah, it was just a really ballsy move from Marvel and in retrospect you can look at it and think about that as being probably one of the biggest and riskiest moves in Hollywood history. And it's funny that it's attached to this movie of Iron man, because they also made another really risky move that we'll get into a little bit later. But in terms of the MCU and their launching strategy, they knew that they wanted to make it character driven and they wanted to make the movies feel modernized. So in this movie, in Iron man, they shifted the location of Tony Stark's capturing from Vietnam, like the Vietnam War, to Afghanistan, because that was contemporary at the time.

Speaker 1: 49:00

And the script writing was a nightmare, as we've talked about before. It went through constant redrafts and it went to the point where Favreau employed a bunch of people that he kind of called the Marvel Internal Creative Committee and there was about six people involved in it. Some of the people in it was Mark Miller and Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada, who are really big comic book writers, and the good thing about that was that they were trying to balance authenticity and accessibility for new people. But if you get that many people that are creative in a room, you can create a big problem because nobody's ideas get any leverage or time, because everybody has a good idea. Yeah, so that was a really big sticky part with that. But Favreau knew that he wanted to blend action and humor and also that realism, and he wanted that to become Marvel's tone and signature throughout the years, which I think that he did.

Speaker 2: 49:56

Oh, John Favreau has been the pillar that are holding up Marvel right now.

Speaker 1: 50:03

Yeah, and also Star Wars during that time too.

Speaker 2: 50:04

Oh, 100 Star Wars he literally did the same thing.

Speaker 1: 50:07

He went into Star Wars and reignited Star Wars. So he's just like this really creative dude that just comes in, and Robert Downey Jr actually said in an interview that he is the most creative yet poised man that he has ever had to work for. Who is in a high stress environment, and he but he's also one that will will tell you when you're messing around and really pull you in line and he'll tell you that he's not responsible for your feelings after he gives you feedback. You're a grown man. You can you can deal with with that element of it. He's got. He seems like that's hard too. Yeah, he's got so much on his plate that he has to do if you're not comfortable. And he had to sort of take that line with robert as well, just due to his history. But I think he had a vision for what could work and when he was coming onto the project he favreau had come off elf, which is now an amazing christmas and well.

Speaker 2: 50:57

Some people actually. No, to be fair, a lot of people do love that movie. I know so many people love that movie. I am not one of them.

Speaker 1: 51:04

Will Ferrell ruins it for me, but I think the actual movie is good, it ruins it for me too.

Speaker 2: 51:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just so annoying, I know.

Speaker 1: 51:10

Man, I'm so glad I'm sitting next to someone who also dislikes Will Ferrell, because I've been in so many circles.

Speaker 2: 51:15

I don't dislike Will Ferrell.

Speaker 1: 51:17

We dislike Will Ferrell on this podcast I love. Anchorman. We'll never do a Will Ferrell month. I'll tell you that.

Speaker 2: 51:24

I do like some of the stuff he's been in, but yeah, I wouldn't.

Speaker 1: 51:28

Yeah, no, but then he also made Zathura, which I liked.

Speaker 2: 51:34

I love Zathra. I watched that like just a long ago I bought it, it bombed, like apparently it bombed. Which is just such a great movie. It's like Jumanji, but space.

Speaker 1: 51:43

I know. And how could that not sell? I know, right, because, yeah. So he was on the hunt for his next big project and the one that would define his career no-transcript, timothy Oliphant for the role of Iron man. But he really, really thought that Downey's experience in the field of being a down and out actor and his work that he had done since 2003, since getting sober, mirrored that of Tony Stark's transformation that he wanted to portray in this film, that he would really get the character. But there was someone who was hesitant and even disgruntled at the fact that Robert Downey Jr was going to be cast. Do you know who? That was? Brash.

Speaker 2: 52:59

Disgruntled. Ooh, someone didn't like that.

Speaker 1: 53:01

Yep, somebody didn't like that Robert Downey Jr was going to be cast as Iron man.

Speaker 2: 53:06

In the cast, or was it just in production?

Speaker 1: 53:08

In general. Oh just in general. Yeah, ah, marvel, they fucking hated the idea because obviously they were already risking a lot of money.

Speaker 1: 53:19

Oh yeah, it's a big risk and you know he's in and out of rehab and jail was definitely not playing to his strengths there. But Favreau feverishly championed for Downey and thought that he was a really strong. He was facing strong internal resistance at the time and he was in a good place to be able to go through and complete the role. And he had these strict conditions that he for insurance obviously because it was a high risk of insurance when they cast him, but there was also some sobriety clauses in his contract and they also only offered him $500,000 with the promise of back-end deals as well. But in saying that, they, they, they sort of ended up calling it Feige, ended up calling it Kevin.

Speaker 1: 54:09

Feige said that it was the biggest risk and it was also the most important thing that Marvel ever did in terms of casting a character because of how well he ended up playing Tony Stark, like he definitely brought that realism to the role and from watching the behind the scenes brash he it was so joyful for me to watch because he was just so happy to be working like. It was so amazing to see that he was really involved with all the cast members and even involved in the special effects team. To the prop makers that made the suit. He was just so happy around everybody he was so thankful to he wouldn't even call them stunt doubles because he felt that they were also performing the role of Tony Stark Iron man as well, because they wore like the 90 pound mark one suit a lot of the time. He was just so grateful to be on the job.

Speaker 1: 55:03

And he said that he kind of had this epiphany when he was shooting the scene where he was in the mark one in the sand looking up at the sun and there was a desert storm that was about to occur and he said this is probably the worst conditions ever. But but looking around at this crew working with great people, jon Favreau is just a beast behind the camera. And he said he couldn't be more grateful to have been picked for this role and honestly, watching that in research for this made me look back at like why he's returned to the Marvel Universe now, because I think he was always an actor that really wanted to be taken seriously. He always was chasing that, not relevance, but he wanted people to know that he was talented and everybody did. But there was a but attached to it he's talented but he is a slave to his addictions.

Speaker 2: 55:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 55:46

And he wanted to knock that away, and he did that through Oppenheimer when he won his Oscar. And now I feel like he's returning to the roles that brought him joy, which I think is the MCU, which is why he's agreed to come back as as Dr Doom Cause I think he likes working in the environment. I think it really brings him joy.

Speaker 2: 56:02

Yeah, and I love that for him. I still don't love him, sorry, I'm sorry. I like I will. Actually I will hold out in judgment until I actually see how they run it.

Speaker 1: 56:15

It'll be interesting to see how they end up doing it, and we have talked about it on the podcast before. But I'm optimistically curious, more so from doing research on this film because I just know how much he enjoys.

Speaker 2: 56:28

No matter what he does, he's probably going to do a spectacular job, but, yeah, I'm more so. My worry is more so about the character rather than the actor. He'll do a fantastic job, but I'm more worried about because Doom is one of, if not the most detrimental bad guys in the Marvel universe in general.

Speaker 1: 56:52

I don't want them to mess it up.

Speaker 2: 56:53

Yeah, yeah that's mirrored by a lot of people. Brash, I'm definitely sure, because as much as I will In general. Yeah, he definitely is, and I don't want them to mess it up.

Speaker 1: 56:56

Yeah, yeah, that's mirrored by a lot of people. Brash, I'm definitely sure, because as much as I will love and always watch a Marvel movie watching Iron man 1 for this again I could see where the magic started and you could sort of see the hopeful glimmer. And if you remember watching these movies, when the last one came out, it was the first time anybody would stay in a cinema past the credits because they wanted to know what was going to happen next. It was that kind of magic about what was what. The connection was and that was something that this, this movie, also birthed was the, the post credit scene, which has been adopted by lots of different movies, even most recently by Ryan Coogler in Sinners, which is not anything related to superheroes, but it's just almost like a staple or like a postscript that cinematographers use or directors use now, and that's as a result of Marvel.

Speaker 2: 57:49

I always love those scenes because, even if it's a movie that has a clear end, even if it's a movie that has a clear end, it gives a possibility of future movie, future stories being told.

Speaker 1: 58:02

Yeah, I think they work best when there is a plan and you can tell that there's a plan for the future and how that character that appears in the post-credits scene will be used in the future, like the one at the end of Iron man, when Samuel L Jackson's there as Nick Fury and just says the word Avengers, yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 58:18

So you think, okay, that's going to happen, moving forward, we know what that's all about. And also, can I just say for the comic book fans of the time, when they saw samuel jackson playing nick fury, who the character was modeled after in the ultimate avengers universe in the comic books, that would have been just like amazing to look at and watch and see, because that's fan casting 101, you know, and I, who better to play nick fury than the guy they modeled the comic book character on for the revamped avengers in the early 2000s? And I think that not only did this movie initiate the end credit scene, but it also, as we've talked about, initiated the franchise building. So this is the first chapter of a much larger saga and those post-credit scenes would indicate what was coming next. That was also connected and I think that the best thing about those post-credit scenes was. It didn't have to be a direct sequel.

Speaker 2: 59:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 59:10

It could be like a nuanced sequel, For example, when we saw little glimpses of Captain America's shield in Tony's workshop and little Easter eggs like that which movies like Iron man invented as well, little Easter eggs like that for comic book fans to see and find it's just like a really great time in cinema. And I definitely think that the landscape of movies would be completely different if Iron man didn't exist. Because if you think about the MCU as a cinema-going experience over the last 15 years of our lives, it's crazy to me to think that that all started with one movie and two really big gambles from a studio. Like that's insane. There are so few things that you can trace back to a single origin point. But this is one time where you can look at it and say that is the moment that it occurred.

Speaker 1: 1:00:00

And looking back and seeing that Marvel banked half of their character rights on one movie with an actor who had been in and out of rehab, who had a very checkered past, you know, if it didn't work out how it did, you might look at it and say, dumb, that was really dumb, don't move guys. Yeah. But now we look at it and we're just like that is inventive ingenuity and bold. Yeah, we talk about it in different terms. One thing I did wanted to say about the legacy of this movie was there's something called the us national film registry. Do you know what that is?

Speaker 2: 1:00:30

I'm guessing it's a registry that filmmakers have to plan on to.

Speaker 1: 1:00:36

Not quite so. Every year there is a big consensus on what movies are put into this film registry, and it's supposed to put in the most well-crafted and intelligent movies that are a commentary for the times that they were made. So, for example, if this film registry was sent out into space and aliens found it, they would look at it and be like that is who humankind are. So movies on there are things like the social network uh, there's casablanca is in there. Lots of different movies are in there as well, and guess what movie's in there? Brash man, iron man, is in there oh shit, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:01:15

look at the first, the very first scene where fucking Iron man blows up an entire mountainscape. They're going to be like holy shit, these guys have weapons, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:01:24

We are not going to be messing with them.

Speaker 2: 1:01:27

Let's go ahead and beat them, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:01:30

And, I think, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its dominance over Hollywood. I don't think it's something that's going to be repeated in our lifetime and it's pretty awesome that we got to live through it. But it all started with Iron man and I think, and with Robert Downey Jr, and I actually don't think that it could have existed without either of those two things. So that's why I wanted to talk about it in Set Secrets, so thank you for indulging me there probably everyone can sort of look at and even use in their everyday life.

Speaker 2: 1:01:58

Like it's okay to sometimes take those gambles, take those big long shots, because they can sometimes pay out. Gamble responsibly. Gamble responsibly, but I mean. Like it's like work-wise You're really passionate about a job but you're not sure you can do it. And then an opportunity comes along. You're like, oh, that's going to be way out of my league, way out of my league. Throw your hat in the ring. You never know. Like, take that gamble, like you may not get it, well too bad, but you may get it and it may be the best thing you've ever done in your life.

Speaker 1: 1:02:43

That's like the thing and we'll probably and do it. There was a lot of things that were unknown and there was definitely a gamble and looking toward it it was. It was definitely a massively changing moment of my life and it really made me appreciate, even though it wasn't like I've now gone back to be being a classroom teacher, so you might say it was a failed experiment, I guess you could say, but you know I'm not out of the running for other jobs like that, but it's made me appreciate and be better at the job that I'm in now as well.

Speaker 2: 1:03:08

So everything is learning yeah, and it gives you another skill set yeah, exactly, all right, let's actually get into our mvtts now.

Speaker 1: 1:03:17

The mvt is the heart and soul of the podcast, where we break down the one thing that hit hardest, stuck longest or taught us something new from what we just watched. It's our moment to spotlight the takeaway that made us think, feel or see things differently. This is what we learned from iron man from 2008 br. This week I kind of took the reins on the MVT, but I think it's poignant, because my MVT is that reinvention can happen through adversity and hardship, and the reason I say that is because there are multiple scenes throughout this movie that show Tony Stark's reinvention through adversity, but behind the scenes, we also see Robert Downey Jr reinventing himself through adversity. And then, if you look a layer deeper than that Inception style, you'll also see that Marvel Studios reinvented themselves through adversity as well.

Speaker 1: 1:04:07

So because, like these three massive entities Robert Downey Jr, the character of Tony Stark and Marvel all taking these big risks, but all reinventing themselves after going through something very, very hard, and I think that's the main thing you can take away, and I've got a couple of scenes here that sort of illustrate that, and the first one that I can think of is when he's ambushed at the start of the movie. So he's going through in those Jeeps and you can see the bombs going off and he's very confused and in that moment he's a very arrogant character. He's bragging about all the Maxine models that he's been with, he's entering all the questions. Really funny when he realizes that, uh, army person is actually a woman. Yeah, good God, you're a woman, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:04:46

He's like oh no, I see your body structure, I can't keep.

Speaker 1: 1:04:51

I can't with one of the officers when he says is it cool if I take a photo with you? And he goes, yes, it is, it's very cool. He says no gang signs and then he does the peace sign. He goes, yeah, peace, peace. Sure I'd be out of the job with peace.

Speaker 1: 1:05:02

I think that scene serves as like a wake-up call, especially when he is later than attacked, because it shows Tony as this carefree individual who lives this really lavish existence but it's so fragile and it's taken away from him straight away and it's sort of the beginning of his journey towards accountability. And the audience witnessed that shift in Tony's character from real arrogance to reflection. And Robert Downey Jr also does this because he's faced with a moment where he's faced with the consequences of his addictions and he really has to get his act together to get a film role like the one in Iron man. He hits his personal rock bottom and that personal rock bottom, or that ambush that happens to Tony Stark, is what catalyzes his journey from self interest to selfishness or selflessness. And I think that is really good, because Robert Downey's moment changed his life and it also changed Tony Stark's life as well.

Speaker 2: 1:05:59

The Marvel movies, I believe, always have that sort of hint of battling adversity and overcoming odds and I think it's just and I think it's one of the things that makes Marvel. Marvel is like it and I think that like, and I think it goes all the way back to like Stan Lee's look on his creation of Marvel. He always wanted to have that projection of hope and bring hope. Because if you look at DC, one of the only characters that really symbolizes hope for me, I believe, is Superman.

Speaker 2: 1:06:28

Yep, whereas nearly every single Marvel good guy, their whole thing is pretty much always about hope. He's like Spider-Man he brings hope, but his whole young killer is just innate. Their whole thing is pretty much always about hope. Like you look at Spider-Man, like he brings hope but like his whole young killer is just in, like New York, and I think he's the friend of Spider-Man who always inspires hope in others. And I think, yeah, it's a very, it's a very Marvel thing to lean into that sort of giving hope to the people who feel a bit downtrodden. And I think Iron man just like capsulates that, like perfect.

Speaker 1: 1:07:01

Yeah, I think it sort of comes to a head in the moment where he, like he sees the consequences of his actions in terms of the other side using the weapons that he developed against Americans his own soldiers and he's very guilty about that. But there's healthy guilt and there's unhealthy guilt. And unhealthy guilt is when you're looking at you and you're saying I suck and there's nothing I can do about it, because I'm the worst person in the world for doing that. But Tony Stark looks at the behavior and says I have played a part in this and it's something that I can change and there's something that I can grow from. And then when he comes back, he does two things.

Speaker 1: 1:07:39

The first thing he does is goes and gets a cheeseburger. And the second thing that he does is he holds a press conference. And that's almost like that accountability thing as well, because I don't know about you, but I could say I'm going to go to the gym 25 times, 25 mornings in a row and I won't do it. But if I tell people and I have somebody that I'm meeting at the gym and make it a public thing, then it's something I'm accountable for. So he held a press conference. Tony Stark held a press conference, told the world that he was going to change his ways complete 180, no longer do his do weapons and do humanitarian instead pretty much yeah, and at that moment he took accountability for the actions that he took in the situation and was then committed to changing and becoming a reinvented version of Tony Stark.

Speaker 1: 1:08:22

And along the way, there was lots of people that were doubting him. Obadiah Stane was resistant to change. Pepper was even resistant to change, and she's not somebody who benefits from weapons manufacturing no, but she cares about Tony.

Speaker 2: 1:08:34

Yeah, and one of the things that we generally touch, touched on was um terence howard's um roadie. Like at that prince conference I like tony, style robert daniel jr. He, playing stark, literally said I watched my weapon, um, my weapons I made to protect our people, our citizens used against them. And then in the next scene, when um tony goes to roadie, who's a friend of his, like who's his friend mentor, like goes to him and goes oh hey, I'm looking to get your help with a new project right. And he's like oh cool, you're making weapons again. He's like, no, I've got another project. He's like what? No, you should be making weapons. Yeah, it's like, dude, aren't you his friend?

Speaker 1: 1:09:14

that's. That's actually the thing I noticed on a rewatch is the fact that roadie was militaristic to the point where he knew tony for who he was before and was either ignorant or resistant to the fact that he was doing something different and that kind of stopped him from jumping into the role of war machine quicker than he actually did could have yeah, yeah, I noticed that on that on the rewatch as well, but I think that that also mirrors Robert Downey Jr's struggle, because after he announced his sobriety, as Jon Favreau said everything he did was in the public eye.

Speaker 2: 1:09:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:09:47

And after he announced his sobriety, he was accountable for that. He's a person that lives in the public eye, so he was advocating for himself to get more and more work and eventually all the dominoes built up to the point where he was given an opportunity. He took it with both hands and he created this amazing character which spawned an entire cinematic universe. Like there's so many parallels between Robert Downey Jr and Tony Stark, but I like in this movie that, despite all that oppression and doubt from everybody that was around him, literally every major character- yeah, well, he literally goes after jarvis.

Speaker 2: 1:10:19

God bless jarvis after he spoke with uh roadie terence howard, and ten hours is like basically like why don't you go get some rest and come back to me when you can start making?

Speaker 1: 1:10:27

everybody was saying that, when they were saying your delusion will get some rest just rest and then come see me when you're making weapons again.

Speaker 2: 1:10:32

And then he, when he literally goes back to his house, he's like um and he has the mark one up and he's throwing stuff in the trash like trash, not trying to reinvent it. He's like um, I don't know who. Like he's saying jobs, I don't know who I can trust. I'm gonna keep this on my personal server.

Speaker 2: 1:10:45

Yes, because like that means like his long-lasting friend roadie is now someone he can't trust because he saw that bad guys were using his weapons on their soldiers and his friend Rhodey, who is a soldier, is just so nonchalant about it. Yeah, like dude, they're using it against our soldiers. That includes you. You are a soldier for our military. I want to stop making weapons until I can figure out what's going on, so no more of my weapons can be in the enemy's hand to kill our own people. How are you not okay with that? Yeah, you just want me to keep making weapons that keep falling into the bad guy's hands that they keep using against us, especially after he's just demonstrated something as powerful as the Jericho Jericho, you can literally wipe out a city.

Speaker 1: 1:11:35

But yeah, I think it doesn't take Rhodey long to turn around and realize that his friend is on a different path, and I think that that's also something that is cautionable to people that are in the middle of a big sort of change. Like that, if you're changing something that you feel like you need to change, and there are those resistant factors, it can happen because the people who wish you well are worried about you changing that, um, which is the case for pepper. And it can also happen because, like, the people are used to how you've been presenting and, as a result of that, you kind of it kind of worries them that there's that drastic change yeah, and I think it was Even though it might be something for the better.

Speaker 2: 1:12:19

Yeah, that you see in yourself the fact that there's a change. It might be worrying someone, being like is he okay, is something else happening.

Speaker 1: 1:12:27

But even for me, if my friend was doing something like that, I'd probably Pat them on the back. Yeah, respect their choice and be there for them if it sort of fell and crumbled around their feet. But my, my opinion really doesn't kind of matter in that moment. Do you know what I mean? Like that's, that's a choice that they've made based on their decisions.

Speaker 1: 1:12:43

The only reason that a lot of different people had a say in Tony Stark's situation was because he had shareholders and it was a massive company and it had worldwide ramifications of his choice that he made.

Speaker 1: 1:12:57

But how hard would that have been for him as a character to do when his father, who we know about? Tony's relationship with his father has been different in terms of there was love there, but it was almost like a need to please. So he has that need to please his father. But then he goes and pretty much throws away his legacy in quote marks from building all these military technologies. We later find out that he had more going on than that. But he steps away from that through the public sphere and does something that he feels like is better for him, and I think that is the takeaway in terms of reinventing yourself, that you will probably face adversity and you'll probably face questioning, sometimes from people you expect a lot of the time from people you don't. But if you feel like it's the right thing to do, then, like Tony Stark did, you push on and you become Iron man and you save the planet.

Speaker 1: 1:13:43

So the takeaway here is just become Iron man Well everybody has their own version of Iron man, and you don't always need billions and billions of dollars to do it.

Speaker 2: 1:13:51

Every kid out there, go and make yourself a suit and then try and cutting that we are not responsible for any iron man suits flying around.

Speaker 1: 1:14:01

But yeah, I think that there's definitely some moments of of thought that can go into that reinvention sort of process, because there's always going to be people that are dubious of your change and if you believe in it enough, you can push through that questioning and that dubiousness. But it also takes a little bit of self-resilience to know that this is the choice for you, this is the choice you want to make and to go forward and get through it so, if you are making the changes and you do have friends that are cautious about it, don't write them off immediately, because there are some.

Speaker 2: 1:14:34

There are some that're going to be fueled by like jealousy or the bad side, but there are people that are going to be just be fueled by, like, their sense of like their worrying or sense of concern, concern and cautious about the change. Um, just give them a time and like, if it's, if, if the choice is in your mind for something good or a good change, then yeah, they'll come around to it. But yeah, don't dismay people if they don't automatically agree with your choice.

Speaker 1: 1:15:04

Yeah, and you can look at both of the characters of Obadiah, stane and Rhodey in those two lights. There are some people that will definitely be questioning you, which both of them did to Tony Stark. However, rhodeie eventually came around to tony's point of view because he believes in his friend over what his friend has dark industries to the military. That's his job. Yeah, that's on the line, but he was more associating the change with is this better for my friend's well-being?

Speaker 1: 1:15:28

As opposed to obadiah, who's the converse of that, where he was more interested in what he was going to lose in terms of funding, money, prestige, because the deal that Tony's going to be making now is irrelevant and all the work that he'd put in has gone towards nothing, and that has absolutely zero to do with how he feels about Tony as a person, and everything to do with how Obadiah feels about his status and his choice to stop trading weapons affects him personally. So when people make changes like that, there will be the roadies and there will be the Obadiahs, and I think that you have to let go of the Obadiahs and embrace the roadies and the Pepper Potts and the Pepper Potts. I think it's summed up in a line where Tony says I am Iron man because he accepts his new person irregardless of what everybody else thinks and does.

Speaker 1: 1:16:15

He's just like I am Iron man, and he does it again. He tells the public, he tells them this is who I'm going to be, this is who I've chosen to be, and again, rhodey's like stick to the cards. But once he does that and he says he's Iron man, he's kind of supportive again. Alright, are you ready to rate it? Go ahead, okay, alright. All right, this is our fandom portals on a board. It's time to rate and rank it. Each host gives the movie a score out of five. We then take the average and add it to our official letterboxd on board. If you want to follow that, you can do so. Just go on to letterboxdcom and find us at fandom portals.

Speaker 1: 1:16:49

Brash, I gave this four stars and I gave it four stars because, as we discussed, I don't think the villain is villainous enough. I think he represents qualities of tony stark, which I loved. Gave this four stars and I gave it four stars because, as we discussed, I don't think the villain is villainous enough. I think he represents qualities of Tony Stark, which I loved, but I feel like that a good villainous presence is important for movies like this. I think that the visual effects were amazing. I think the story as a whole was good. I liked how grounded it was and how much we learned about Tony Stark, so I think four stars fits for me. What about you? How grounded it was and how much we learned about Tony Stark, so I think four stars fits for me.

Speaker 2: 1:17:16

What about you? I actually agree. When I first saw this, I probably would have graded maybe 4.5, just purely because of, like the fact that, holy shit, marvel did something good, yep. But yes, no, I have to agree. Definitely four because it is a. It's a solid origin story.

Speaker 1: 1:17:35

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 1:17:36

Solid origin story, absolutely Solid origin story. But because it's so focused on that origin story it does leave the whole hero beating the villain sort of aspect of a superhero movie, less than what other movies would be. But yeah, and then they said it looked amazing like the armor First thing that did. Holy shit, I can't get one. And yeah, overall just a solid foundation for what could be built.

Speaker 1: 1:18:14

Yep 30 Reckon. So we've got three movies that sit at four like an average rating of four. We have 500 Days of Summer, star Trek and Big Fish.

Speaker 2: 1:18:23

I reckon it beats all three.

Speaker 1: 1:18:25

I think that it does too. The next one above it is Phantom of the Opera, so I think that sits perfectly.

Speaker 2: 1:18:31

Yep.

Speaker 1: 1:18:32

All right. So with an average rating of four, that means that Iron man will be fifth on our fandom portals. On a board, it will be just behind the Phantom of the Opera and it will be above 500 Days of Summer. So that is our rating and the last rating that we are going to be doing for our Marvel Month Brash.

Speaker 2: 1:18:51

It is, it is Marvel Month is over.

Speaker 1: 1:18:54

Marvel Month is done, so we'll be moving on to our regular programming in the month of May. We'll do our signups now, all right. Thank you everybody for listening. We really do appreciate your time, and if you would like to have some more information about the fandom portals podcast, you can do so by joining our mailing list, which is at wwwfandomportalspodcastcom, and in that mailing list we will only email you once per month and it will include all of our giveaway entry instructions and it will also give you an update on what's happening with our podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:19:27

We have been running a giveaway brush and we have a winner for our giveaway. Yeah, so we have been giving away and offering everybody the chance to win a family pass to the movies of their choice. And, rhys Crook, thank you for joining our mailing list and becoming the winner of our giveaway. So we'll be in contact with you to make sure that you get your prize. Thank you for joining our community and to anybody else that wants to be as lucky as Rhys, you can do so by joining our mailing list at that website mentioned before. It is also in the show notes below Get it, rhys. Get it Rhys.

Speaker 1: 1:19:57

Go and see the Thunderbolts. All right, if you wanted to be a part of our community and offer us your opinions on the movies that we watch. You can do so on Threads, instagram and Reddit and all of those places we are at fandom portals always fandom portals. You can find us there and look for the posts that say what did this movie teach you, and there'll be a poster of the movie, and they're the ones we read out on our podcast. Okay, marvel month is over, as we said, so that means that our community picks will be back up and running, so look at our socials for that as well, for the movie pick for may, and we always air them on the last day of the month. Next week. Next week, we have an exclusive interview with Jeremy Drysdale, who is a screenwriter who actually wrote the movie In the Line of Duty that's starring Aaron Eckhart. So I got the chance to sit down and have a chat to him, and we'll be releasing that episode next week. After that, we'll see, we'll see.

Speaker 2: 1:20:50

This is the month of May.

Speaker 1: 1:20:52

We'll have to talk about what we're going to do on May. Probably one Star Wars thing, sure well, that was my thought yeah, also conveniently timed, but Iron man released on the 8th of May 2008, so timing wise, we're timely, unintentionally timely again. Alright, that is all for today, guys. Thank you very much for joining us for Marvel Month. Please share the podcast with somebody who loves Marvel or somebody who loves podcasts or somebody who you think might love us. And keep learning, keep growing, keep loving fandoms.

Speaker 2: 1:21:21

This is Aaron signing out this is Adam, with one more thing to say. He built this in a cave out of scrap. See you guys, see ya, you.