Marvel Studios’ president Kevin Feige recently sat down with MTV and revealed some new details about Iron Man 3 and specifically how Tony Stark will deal with his post-Avengers life.

Kevin Feige always seems to be willing to give out juicy details about Marvel’s newest films and it’s nice to have someone in charge that doesn’t have that mentality to enforce such a tight-lipped policy for the cast and crew that other studios seem to have adopted over the years. When asked about how The Avengers has affected Tony Stark and his life in Iron Man 3, he had this to say:

“So much of the journey of Iron Man 3 is informed by Tony’s experiences in The Avengers. It’s almost like post-traumatic stress: he really has retreated after the events of The Avengers into his workshop, where he’s building advanced versions of his suits. He has [designed] a version of the suit that can latch onto him in individual pieces … anytime, anywhere. As he starts to realize, it’s basically because he doesn’t want to be out of the suit: he’s seen a lot of things in Avengers and has encountered a lot of powerful people, much more powerful than he is.”

It’s interesting that he likens Stark’s post-Avengers life to be somewhat like “post-traumatic stress,” as the first official trailer for Iron Man 3 really left us feeling like Tony had retreated a bit from his life of wild parties and excess. It seems as though Stark will be headed back into his workshop where he feels the most at home – something we saw a lot of in the first Iron Man film.

Kevin mentions that in some ways, Iron Man 3‘s story reflects that of the cave experience that Tony had in the first film – that he is left with only his brain, which he believes is truly the greatest advantage that Tony Stark will always have compared to his enemies.

Feige continues, saying that just as Stark is realizing he needs to be in the suit at all times for his own safety, “he’s removed again from that ‘convoy’ and brought to the cave with nothing but a box of scraps.

It’s fun for all of us to watch Tony try to figure out how to get out of that scenario. Much of the movie (Iron Man 3) is Tony in the middle of the country without his tools and a fairly broken suit to help him. But that’s his superpower: he wasn’t born on Asgard, he wasn’t hit by gamma rays, and he doesn’t have the super soldier serum. His power is his brain. It’s fun to put Tony Stark in a corner with nothing and see how he can get out of it.”

When asked about Sir Ben Kingsley playing the villain The Mandarin, Feige says that they felt they had some leeway to explore with the character:

“We had leeway to explore the Mandarin in a way that hasn’t been explored before. We found we couldn’t point to any sort of definitive Mandarin story in the comics — but if you print this, I’m sure a million fans will point to a specific story — so as we’ve done with many of the films, we did an amalgamation. The Mandarin is relentless: he’s a non-stop threat, and you’ve seen that in the first teaser trailer when Tony Stark’s house tumbles into the sea. He doesn’t mess around, this guy.”

MTV finally asked if Iron Man 3 would be the last time we see Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in a single superhero film (we know he’ll be reprising his role in The Avengers 2). He somewhat surprisingly said he feels like the Iron Man character is similar to characters like James Bond and Batman, saying: “characters whose stories can go on and on and on — I think Tony is one of those characters. Where we go directly after Iron Man 3 … I’m not looking too far ahead. I’m looking to finish Iron Man 3, getting into Avengers 2, and then seeing where we go from there. But I do think we have more Tony Stark tales to tell, and we’ll take it one movie — or maybe two movies — at a time.”

It seemed like he hadn’t thought too far ahead of Avengers 2 in terms of Robert Downey Jr. reprising his role as Stark, but would you be surprised if Marvel decided to move on with Iron Man even if Robert Downey Jr. decided to leave the role a few years down the road? We know that many actors who play the same character for years often have role-burnout and make the wise choice to leave while the character is still well thought of in the mind of moviegoers.

Marvel’s president, Kevin Feige, had quite a bit more to say about Iron Man 3, so make sure to check out the full MTV interview.

Iron Man 3, starring Roberty Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Sir Ben Kingsley will hit theaters May 3, 2013.