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Jon Favreau on Iron Man
By Fred Topel | Image property of Paramount Pictures
Iron Man
Favreau Talks Iron Man
"The story for me is about a guy who’s got everything," said Favreau. "In every movie there’s always something rotten in Denmark. You’ve got to start off with something out of balance in the world. I think in Marvel movies especially, you look at the personal life of the character in the microcosm and then you look at the macrocosm of the climate of the world. There’s a super villain doing something, there’s a problem in the world that has to be fixed, otherwise life as we know it will not exist. But then also in the character’s personal life there is that sort of thing that happens too. What’s nice about Tony Stark is he’s a guy that you sort of have all the flash and glamour of Tony Stark millionaire, inventor, genius and playboy, and then you get to play the fun of that, but then you also get to explore what that might leave to be desired? How is he flawed? How does he grow and change through his captivity? And when he comes back, how does he become Iron Man? What are those steps in that journey that gets us to a point where we understand who he is, what he stand for and how he’s changed?"
Favreau is also away of decades of Iron Man fans scrutinizing his production. He has been active in the online community answering questions and clarifying rumors. "I welcome it, because I’m right in there. It’s not a scary, weird looming presence. I go online and I look at stuff and I see what people are saying, people are confused about this, and there are certain things that they’re confused about that I want them to be confused about, and there are certain things that they are confused about that I don’t want them to be confused about. I don't want them to be confused about whether or not we hired somebody to score the film because they read on IMDB that something happened, or whether they think the rating's going to be something else, or whether the suit was designed by this guy or that guy. So I like to clarify and then there are certain things where you want to [be vague]. It’s a game you could play with the audience, but I think if they know that you care and are paying attention, and that there are choices that you’re making because you’re making them as a choice and not because you don’t know what you’re doing, they like it."
One such question was the film's rating. At one point speculated as a PG, Favreau confirmed the intention for a PG-13. "You want to be entertaining for everybody, you want it to be appropriate for kids but not geared towards kids, and I think PG-13 is that good balance where you can have violence, you can have real life and death stakes, but yet it’s something I’d be comfortable bringing a 13 year old kid to. It’s tough, these type of movies you want to be good for the whole audience, for everybody and if you skew too young you sometimes disappoint adults, and if you make it too dark and too violent or too much explicit language or sexuality to it, there are a lot of kids out there who want see this. I have a six year old who’s dying to see the movie, I don’t want anything in there that’s going to make me, as a responsible parent, uncomfortable that he’s going to be seeing something that’s not going to freak him out too much."
With so much to explore in the first film, Favreau has not even gotten to some of Iron Man's juiciest issues, like alcoholism. "Honestly, I’m trying to be dictated by the story of the books, the Demon in the Bottle happened in the ‘80s, it was much later. [The story] started off in the ‘60s, so what you really grasp for it seems in success if you’re lucky enough to make more than one of these movies, is what happens to the character, how does it change so that it doesn’t just feel like a serialized hero that just goes through, fights different of bad guys. How does he progress through each story? The good part about an origin story is you have a whole Joseph Campbell journey that the guy goes through in becoming a hero. The problem is, you have so much story to tell that its starts to get clogged up with too much stuff, and then you end up rushing through beat your villains and things. The problems with the second and third ones are you’ve got great villains, everybody knows who the guy is, but how is he different from the beginning to the end of the movie? And for me, as a filmmaker and a storyteller, I really look for that whole progression in character, what’s the mythology of this movie, what’s the myth that you’re telling, and that’s what makes it entertaining."
If Favreau gets to continue the story, he is confident that all of his actors will be on board. "I think if their experience is good, which it has been so far, based on what everybody has told me, maybe they’ll say something different to you guys, but I know that I’ve made it fun, I’ve made it something where hopefully the work is as good a quality as they would get on any movie so it doesn't feel like they're working on a movie that's one for them. You know, one for the man, one for themselves or one for their career. I said to Robert, 'What do you want to do in your career now?' He said, ‘I want to make movies that are good and that people are going to see.' And it seems very simple, but it’s a pretty profound statement. Actors want to be in movies that are good, that they’re proud of, but there’s nothing more frustrating than making a great movie that is a featured title on Netflix that 'Oh, I really wanted to see that one.' You want to do a movie that is going to be part of your culture. Pirates of the Caribbean, you reference that and it’s like The Sopranos, everybody knows what you’re talking about, and you’ve impacted lives, you’ve created a cultural ripple. And that’s something that you can’t get always with an indie film. Sometimes it happens, like Swingers. Usually it doesn’t."
Iron Man opens to theaters on May 2nd.
For the posters, trailers, stills and latest headlines, go to the Iron
Man Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Paramount Pictures
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