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Jon Favreau on Iron Man II and III
LONG comingsoon.net article....
A tease....
A tease....
Jon Favreau just can't seem to talk too much about Iron Man 2 without talking about Iron Man 3.
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Q: You don't have The Mandarin in "Iron Man" but you referenced him with the Ten Rings, and so you can get that fantastical stuff in there with that character if you wanted it, right?
Favreau: It is. The Mandarin is such a tricky character for us because everywhere you turn it's a minefield. So we get into the mystical Asian dark arts and inter-dimensional travel and all the rings that do the different things and psychic abilities and stuff and it's like, "That could be cool. Maybe it's cool. Maybe if we make it really authentic." Then you see the trailer for "The Mummy" movie and it's like they've got The Manderin AND Fing Fang Foom in there! And they shot in China and it's like as authentic as you're ever going to get. It's like, "Ooh, I don't know if that fits our film." It was great for "The Mummy," though. So where do you go with it? What are your rules and how do you stay consistent with them? What happens is that people get desperate as they're looking for inspiration to up the ante and so you start breaking your own rules, and that's when the movies start to lose their identity.
Q: You've hinted at The Mandarin in the third film.
Favreau: Yeah, The Mandarin is still the guy. He's the main guy, but we always remind ourselves that nobody liked The Emperor compared to Darth Vader in the "Star Wars" movies. He's got the same lightening bolts, but when The Emperor was this figure that you just saw obliquely it was like, "Sh*t, Darth Vader is bowing to someone? That guy must be really cool!" But then as he talked more it was like, "Alright, enough." In "The Clone Wars" he was like a sidekick. So it's really all how you treat the person and that's what informs what it's going to be. So the Mandarin, to have that kind of weight to him is really a matter of using all the narrative tricks to do it, but a dude running and jumping around in robes shooting these beams and rays that have powers that really, if you take them literally, would throw off the balance of the whole universe. So how do you do that and keep the whole thing together, but yet fulfill the expectations from the book? We do have him and I think it's something where I feel a little bit goes a long way. So there's a lot of other characters and a lot of other countries that have become very interesting lately that fit very well into our universe. The "Iron Man" canon has become incredibly cogent and applicable once again.
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Q: How much is Downey involved in the development of the sequel?
Favreau: I was at his house yesterday. I was there yesterday and he's getting ready to go do "Sherlock Holmes," leaving Sunday. He went to Japan briefly to promote this movie there, "Iron Man," but clearly we met Justin through him. He really thought the world of him from that process and there was a lot of writing going on during that film too. There are things like, "What do you want to play, Robert? What should we do?" Robert was very collaborative on the set and writing it and making all the choices. Part of my gig is to not just ask him to stand on his mark, but learn to bring enough of his reality into it so that it seems interesting and has more dimension. So he's been very involved and his star has only risen and his leverage is only greater, and now he's not the guy who's like, "Please let me screen test." Now he's the guy who's being offered every movie in town.
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Q: There's also been talk of War Machine. Can you talk about that?
Favreau: I want to do it. We're drawing War Machine. We're figuring it out. We're talking to Terrence [Howard]. We're seeing if he can take some time out of his new life as a musician to be War Machine, to do it. I think that Terrence and the character of Rhodey was smaller in the first movie than we had anticipated, but that's how it worked for the movie. That's how it worked best for the story, the best way to tell that story of the origin, spending half of the movie in the cave. But it does set the table very well for this character. War Machine is fun and, again, you look for ways to up the ante. It's tough to up the ante on the villain side without going into strange territories, but what we can do is really have a lot of fun with our family, our main characters and that includes myself. I expect to have more to do in this one or I will walk [Laughs]. We certainly have Rhodey and Gwyneth – really, it's the best work that I've seen her do, for me, for my tastes. I know she's won Oscars and stuff and she's a good actress, but for me I thought that she had great chemistry with Robert. Of course we'll see more of Robert and then we'll see how that basic group of four people moves forward towards the inevitable "Avengers" that's coming, and how The Mandarin, how largely he looms in this next one. These are the types of things that we're doing, but mostly from a perspective of tone.
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Q: You don't have The Mandarin in "Iron Man" but you referenced him with the Ten Rings, and so you can get that fantastical stuff in there with that character if you wanted it, right?
Favreau: It is. The Mandarin is such a tricky character for us because everywhere you turn it's a minefield. So we get into the mystical Asian dark arts and inter-dimensional travel and all the rings that do the different things and psychic abilities and stuff and it's like, "That could be cool. Maybe it's cool. Maybe if we make it really authentic." Then you see the trailer for "The Mummy" movie and it's like they've got The Manderin AND Fing Fang Foom in there! And they shot in China and it's like as authentic as you're ever going to get. It's like, "Ooh, I don't know if that fits our film." It was great for "The Mummy," though. So where do you go with it? What are your rules and how do you stay consistent with them? What happens is that people get desperate as they're looking for inspiration to up the ante and so you start breaking your own rules, and that's when the movies start to lose their identity.
Q: You've hinted at The Mandarin in the third film.
Favreau: Yeah, The Mandarin is still the guy. He's the main guy, but we always remind ourselves that nobody liked The Emperor compared to Darth Vader in the "Star Wars" movies. He's got the same lightening bolts, but when The Emperor was this figure that you just saw obliquely it was like, "Sh*t, Darth Vader is bowing to someone? That guy must be really cool!" But then as he talked more it was like, "Alright, enough." In "The Clone Wars" he was like a sidekick. So it's really all how you treat the person and that's what informs what it's going to be. So the Mandarin, to have that kind of weight to him is really a matter of using all the narrative tricks to do it, but a dude running and jumping around in robes shooting these beams and rays that have powers that really, if you take them literally, would throw off the balance of the whole universe. So how do you do that and keep the whole thing together, but yet fulfill the expectations from the book? We do have him and I think it's something where I feel a little bit goes a long way. So there's a lot of other characters and a lot of other countries that have become very interesting lately that fit very well into our universe. The "Iron Man" canon has become incredibly cogent and applicable once again.
>
Q: How much is Downey involved in the development of the sequel?
Favreau: I was at his house yesterday. I was there yesterday and he's getting ready to go do "Sherlock Holmes," leaving Sunday. He went to Japan briefly to promote this movie there, "Iron Man," but clearly we met Justin through him. He really thought the world of him from that process and there was a lot of writing going on during that film too. There are things like, "What do you want to play, Robert? What should we do?" Robert was very collaborative on the set and writing it and making all the choices. Part of my gig is to not just ask him to stand on his mark, but learn to bring enough of his reality into it so that it seems interesting and has more dimension. So he's been very involved and his star has only risen and his leverage is only greater, and now he's not the guy who's like, "Please let me screen test." Now he's the guy who's being offered every movie in town.
>
Q: There's also been talk of War Machine. Can you talk about that?
Favreau: I want to do it. We're drawing War Machine. We're figuring it out. We're talking to Terrence [Howard]. We're seeing if he can take some time out of his new life as a musician to be War Machine, to do it. I think that Terrence and the character of Rhodey was smaller in the first movie than we had anticipated, but that's how it worked for the movie. That's how it worked best for the story, the best way to tell that story of the origin, spending half of the movie in the cave. But it does set the table very well for this character. War Machine is fun and, again, you look for ways to up the ante. It's tough to up the ante on the villain side without going into strange territories, but what we can do is really have a lot of fun with our family, our main characters and that includes myself. I expect to have more to do in this one or I will walk [Laughs]. We certainly have Rhodey and Gwyneth – really, it's the best work that I've seen her do, for me, for my tastes. I know she's won Oscars and stuff and she's a good actress, but for me I thought that she had great chemistry with Robert. Of course we'll see more of Robert and then we'll see how that basic group of four people moves forward towards the inevitable "Avengers" that's coming, and how The Mandarin, how largely he looms in this next one. These are the types of things that we're doing, but mostly from a perspective of tone.
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