Iron Man 3 doesn’t hit theaters worldwide for another few days, and American viewers still have just under two weeks to go until their favorite Avenger hits the big screen for the fourth time. Luckily, the stars were available yesterday to help us to keep the rabid fans at bay until they can experience the film for themselves.
Hypable was present at a press conference in Beverly Hills to report on what the stars had to say about Iron Man 3, which was screened to Hypable and a number of other film journalists over the weekend.
The journalists then joined the press conference to chat with Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man), Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts), Sir Ben Kingsley (The Mandarin), Don Cheadle (James “Rhodey” Rhodes), Rebecca Hall (Maya Hansen), Guy Pearce (Aldrich Killian), and writer/director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) about the film, including what what they were trying to do with it and what they expect from audiences.
Right off the bat, a few shocking scenes from Iron Man 3 that feature explosions in familiar landmarks were brought up in an attempt to parallel the film with recent world events.
Robert Downey Jr. responded with his usual fervor, but roundly refused to discuss real-life politics during the conference. “I’d like to speak for all of us and say ‘I like entertainers to talk about entertainment,'” said Downey. “I think that in a sidebar it’s different, but I think at this level, it’s kinda – everyone is having their own personal feelings about it.”
“Clearly this movie was in the can before anything transpired in the past week,” said Cheadle. “The job of this film is to entertain. We wanted to give people the ability to go into a dark room and have a couple of hours of pure enjoyment.”
Indeed, the world is a scary place not only in our reality, but the semi-realistic world that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has laid out in front of us. During the course of the film, a number of missiles are sent in Tony Stark’s direction, and a number of things explode, but Gwyneth Paltrow says that the film offered the opportunity this unfortunate truth of the world to her son.
“We do live in an unsafe world, that’s the truth. I’m dealing with this now with my seven year old. He’s sort of grappling with the fact that the world is unsafe and there are people who do harmful things,” said Paltrow. “I know that after my children saw the movie, I had a certain conversation with my son about it.”
The movie will certainly leave a number of intricate details up to parents to explain, including the influence of major corporations, the current social climate of fear, and the super-tricky role that The Mandarin plays in the plot.
“A movie is only as good as its bad guy,” said Downey. “Once we cast Sir Ben, half our troubles went away, and then the other half had to do with him executing this very peculiar and awesome arc.”
Indeed, Kingsley had a truly groundbreaking motivation behind his villain, and he had no trouble going in deep detail with us at Hypable in order to help us gain a full understanding of what we had just seen him do.
“His weird iconography was there to disconcert and completely scatter any expectations of where he might be coming from. The line, ‘You will never see me coming’ voices the unpredictability that he has.”
Unpredictable is definitely the word to describe Kingsley’s Mandarin, and we bugged him further about how much of the character he was able to improvise.
“It’s all in the script, It’s a great script, it was a wonderful read, and we stuck very closely to it,” said Kingsley. “Whenever we do improvise, it’s minimal, just to maybe sharpen one or two of the ideas that we were playing with on the set, but it’s all there.”
We at Hypable were particularly interested in the unique take that Iron Man 3 has on the character of The Mandarin, and writer/director Shane Black (who has called the character a “racist caricature” in the past) stepped up to explain his innovative take on the classic villain.
The full response gets a little too spoilery to continue, and we’ll update this story as Iron Man 3 hits theaters and viewers are exposed to the groundbreaking character evolution themselves.
Click here to read more from Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Shane Black, and more!
Black’s vision represents a clear departure from the Iron Man franchise that we were familiar with during Phase 1, and Downey had a very succinct way of describing what the Iron Man franchise has evolved into.
He even gives an example of the type of thing that you wouldn’t expect to see in Iron Man 3, in the form of the young boy that happens across Tony in his shed. “[Black’s] idea of a superhero running into a little kid in the heartland of America I think wound up being a wise choice and a calculated risk,” said Downey.
Downey also wanted to give a quick shout out to the young actor that shares a good deal of scenes with the established super-hero during the events of Iron Man 3.
“Ty Simpkin is great, I taught him everything he knows,” said Downey. “I think we’ll be seeing a lot of him”
That wasn’t it either, Stark suffers a number of panic attacks during the film, most of them caused by the children around him. “I liked the idea of kids bringing their parents to the verge of an anxiety attack,” said Downey.
A young boy isn’t Downey’s only co-star though, Don Cheadle returns in Iron Man 3 to play Rhodey, and it’s refreshing to see him throwing punches and suiting up in two different suits throughout the film. Both Iron Patriot and War Machine look gorgeous in the film, but Cheadle can’t help but play favorites with his suits, since he has to worry about the weight.
As you’ve seen in the TV spots and trailers, by the end of the film it’s down to Tony Stark and Rhodey to save the day, and it starts to really feel like a Shane Black film.
“Shane almost coined and really put a stamp on buddy action movies,” said Cheadle.
Even though Iron Man 3 stands apart from other films in crossed-over Marvel Cinematic Universe, one of the major themes running through Iron Man 3 is the idea that Tony needs other people.
“I wanted it to feel like Tony and Rhodey last time decided that he wasn’t an island and there was kind of this power of their partnership, and that expanded in The Avengers,” said Downey.
The A-word was inevitably going to come up, and even though Avengers 2 is still two years away, it’s only been a year since The Avengers and Iron Man 3 definitely discusses the events of the Battle of New York, and there are more than a few references to Tony’s associates throughout the course of the movie.
We knew from the beginning that we wouldn’t see any Avengers cameos in Iron Man 3, but Downey understands that since they’re connected, they need to acknowledge each other.
Due to the constantly connected feeling that the films in Marvel Cinematic Universe give us, anyone can crossover at any time. take Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, who started in Iron Man 2, crossed over to The Avengers and will now be appearing in next year’s Captain America: the Winter Soldier.
The same applies to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts, who appeared in The Avengers last year, but never got the chance to suit up for the action. Paltrow points out that, in the comics, Pepper gets her own suit and becomes her own superhero named Rescue.
Immediately, Robert pointed out that Pepper also marries Happy Hogan in the comics, to which Paltrow responded with a hearty “AWWW YEAH.”
After the laughter died down, Cheadle spoke up about a possible appearance in The Avengers 2.
“I think you want to ask me if I’m gonna be in The Avengers“, said Cheadle, which brought the audience of press to a round of applause.
“There it is, public opinion,” responded Downey.
However, when Hypable asked Downey if they would be filming one last scene tonight (a throwback to the Avengers press conference when Downey spilled the beans on Whedon’s “secret” night-time shoot for the Shawarma scene at the tail end of the Avengers), Cheadle admitted that he didn’t know what we were talking about.
“Let me explain this to my associate,” said Downey, who turned to Cheadle and explained. “We shoot those Easter eggs, which is after the credits there’s that little piece that gets everyone excited.”
That’s when Cheadle let a guilty little bomb drop. “I never sat through to the end of the whole thing,” said Cheadle. “As soon as Loki’s off the screen I usually just walk out.”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss [Iron Man 4, 5, and 6],” said Downey. “The future, as usual, is uncertain and I think the great thing is that we never could’ve known what and who was gonna come together for the third Iron Man.”
“In all earnestness, things are very much in flux right now,” said Downey, “And Marvel has their plans, and we’re all living and growing, so we’ll see what happens.”
Downey mentioned that he just heard some fresh news about Thor:The Dark World (we wonder if he’s seen the new trailer yet), so it’s a little reassuring to know that the individual cast members are reading the news about movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man just like the rest of us.