Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau used to see himself as a master at surpassing low expectations. "Nobody expected anything of the first Iron Man movie," he says. "In fact, they rolled their eyes at the thought of launching a franchise with this obscure hero, thinking we were pushing the comic book genre too far."
Then Iron Man came out two summers ago and made $585 million. Suddenly Favreau, the actor-turned-writer-turned-action-movie-mogul, is feeling a new kind of challenge: He has to make the fanboys happy.
"The pressure I'm feeling this time is that the bar is much higher," Favreau says in a phone interview with Wired.com. "I feel indebted to the fans that made the first one successful and I want to make sure that the fans are satisfied. It's not about the movie making money, though it's tracking well. For me, the greater point is how Iron Man 2 is going to be received creatively, and will the fans see Iron Man 2 as actually living up to the promise of the first one?"
The key asset for Iron Man 2, opening next Friday, is Robert Downey Jr., who returns in the title role as rapier-witted weapons genius Tony Stark. Picking up after his "I am Iron Man" declaration, Stark maintains his cocky facade in the sequel while concealing a dark secret from a mostly new crew of feisty friends and fearsome foes. Joining Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson are franchise newcomers Sam Rockwell (Moon) and Don Cheadle, with Scarlett Johansson in the role of Natalie/Black Widow.
Favreau – who, playing the role of Stark chauffeur Happy Hogan, gets slammed to a boxing-ring floor by Johansson in the sequel – made his most inspired Iron Man 2 casting choice by picking Mickey Rourke to play the heavy: ex-con Russian inventor Ivan Vanko, aka Whiplash.
Fighting for Whiplash
Three years ago, Favreau had a tough time convincing the studio to cast Downey as Iron Man's lead. This time, the director says, "I had to sell the studio on Mickey. I knew him from Sin City and I saw The Wrestler and I said, 'This is the guy.' The studio wasn't pleased with the idea. They were like, 'Oh, here we go again,' because we'd been through it with Robert on the first one. I said, 'Exactly, here we go again, trust me.'"
Paramount Pictures wasn't the only reluctant party. "I had to chase Mickey down because he wasn't sure he wanted to do it but Robert actually badgered Mickey every step of the way during the awards tour for Tropic Thunder," Favreau says. "I had drawings made up of Mickey with the tattoos and the whole deal, and the role started to captivate him."
Once on board, the Method-trained Rourke learned to speak Russian, spent time in a prison studying the lore of incarceration tattoos and had a gleaming set of metal-plated teeth implanted in his mouth. "My idea was this sort of the Eastern Promises underworld figure, and Mickey added all the other stuff on top of it," Favreau says.
Dressed in an exoskeleton suit patched together from spare parts and armed with energized whips, Rourke injects a major dose of menace in his role as a bitter genius intent on ruining Tony Stark's legacy. "I needed an actor you could cut to for a short amount of screen time," Favreau says, "yet he would give his character enough gravity that you know Tony Stark is in trouble. What other actor can you think of right now that would balance out the movie against Robert, who has the most presence of anybody out there right now?"
Cowboys and Aliens
Jon Favreau's next project stars Daniel "James Bond" Craig in a comic book-based story scripted by Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof. Here's the director's take.
Concept: "This is a mashup of two different genres, so it's a matter of finding the best of both sci-fi and Westerns."
Influences: "We draw inspiration from films like Close Encounters, Predator and Alien. For the other side of the coin, we're looking at everything from John Ford to Sergio Leone to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
2-D or not 2-D: "I don't want to [shoot in 2-D and] convert to 3-D. For me, it's not there yet. We're exploring shooting stereo because if it's going to be 3-D, it's going to be shot in 3-D. Nobody's ever tried to shoot something out in the desert with that rig yet, so it would be a whole new application for the technology."
Keeping Things Loose
As with its predecessor, Favreau encouraged improvisation in his Shell-Head sequel. "The day Iron Man 2 wrapped is the day we had a locked script," says Favreau.
Trained at The Second City improv theater troupe in Chicago, Favreau learned how to wing it on film opposite master ad-libber Vince Vaughn in 1996 indie breakthrough, Swingers.
Favreau applied those lessons to the superhero genre. Unlike many effects-laden movies, in which actors seem like pawns on the green-screen chess board, the Iron Man movies crackle with the interplay between Downey's Tony Stark and his sundry sparring partners.
In big action movies, Favreau says, "so many things are planned a year ahead that you cannot move one inch from where the explosion's going to be. You don't want the movie to be like this overly wrought baroque carving that might be incredibly detailed but doesn't feel alive. I have no interest in that. You have to create something that feels very lively about the characters and their relationships."
Improvisation keeps the visual effects machinery from weighing down performances, according to Favreau.
"It's a matter of allowing people to paraphrase and find a real meter and rhythm to it, like musicians doing a solo on a song," the director says. "You better get back into 'Bye Bye Blackbird' by the end of the song. So it's not free-form improvisation and these are not comedians who are improvising. They're not winking at the audience. These actors were selected because they share a certain common trait, which is that they're all emotionally correct in their humor, and quick-witted, and that spontaneity allows the movie not to feel wooden."
A Suitcase for Comics Fans
Besides new characters, the sequel includes new locales, new War Machine armor, new droids and new hints about the forthcoming The Avengers movie, which will assemble characters like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and Hulk into a sweeping superhero epic that ties together the Marvel Comics movie universe.
Favreau wanted to make sure Iron Man 2 also included new treats for devotees of the Marvel comic book.
"As a little tip of the hat to the fans, I wanted to pull off the suitcase suit," he says. "In the comic book, they have this ridiculous thing where Tony Stark would open up an attache case, throw a glove on, and on the next page, he'd have the whole suit on. How do you make the suitcase suit real? That was another challenge we presented to ourselves."
Actors Who Aren't Pushovers
Iron Man 2 punctuates its character-driven scenes with huge action set pieces, including a showdown at Monaco Grand Prix. The sequence features fake crowds, digitally inserted to roar at the spectacle of 17 specially designed cars that were flipped in a copycat track built in California.
"Mastering the technical aspects has been my big challenge over the last four years," says Favreau.
Working with actors, on the other hand, comes easily. "I want actors who have a strong, smart point of view to challenge me," says Favreau. "The last thing I want is an actor who stands on his mark and just says whatever the hell I tell him. I want somebody who's going to say, 'This doesn't make sense.' When we come up with something we all like, the movie wins."
Going toe to toe with Iron Man 2's formidable star brought out the best in both Favreau and the rest of the cast. "Robert is constantly placing larger and larger demands upon himself and the others around him," Favreau says. "Cheadle, Rockwell, Scarlett – every one of them are stewards of their own characters. These are very smart people. I like smart actors. That's the key. Talent is good, too. But I'll take intelligence over talent any day."
See Also:
