Favreau: Iron Man is America's Dark Side
The director originally wanted to helm the Captain America picture. Also, more details on the Mandarin.
Actor/director Jon Favreau, who played Foggy Nelson in the Daredevil movie and is now directing the Iron Man film, tells Superhero Hype how he came to direct this film.
"Avi [Arad] and I had been talking about working together for a while, since we met on 'Daredevil'--I played Foggy--and I sort of became a director and we always got on very well ...[S]o every time I'd see him he'd always grab me and we would talk for twenty minutes and I'd always ask him about 'Captain America,' this was long before Marvel broke off and became its own studio, so that was the one I was interested in, because I thought there were a lot of comedic possibilities with a guy who got frozen and then turned around and now is fighting for America.
"'Iron Man' has always been the flipside of 'Captain America,' representing maybe more pragmatic, darker aspects of America," Favreau said. "When we first talked about the notion of doing 'Iron Man,' I felt excited because it lends itself, very easily, to the technology that is available today. Where as an organic superhero, you know anybody who is a guy in tights is a little scary in CGI, but a robot-based guy is really a marriage made in heaven, so I'm exploring what the technology has to offer.
"To me, with the political climate what it is now, it's such a complex character and these times are so complex, mirroring in a lot of ways, his inception in the 60's when on the cusp of Vietnam, it was just as unpopular to have an arms manufacturer as your hero," he said. "I really wanted to explore that so it's very exciting to me in that way. It's also exciting because it's Marvel's first movie on its own."
You can read the rest of the interview here.
Meanwhile, Favreau has written on his Iron Man Blog that the Mandarin won't be a "magical Fu Manchu stereotype" as depicted in the Silver Age Tales of Suspense comics. "We are taking many liberties to update the villain. He will still size up as Stark's nemesis, but we're throwing in a few surprises for the fans of the books," he said.
He adds that he hired Adi Granov to do the suit design and had dinner with Joe Quesada and Joss Whedon to talk about Iron Man, Civil War and Wonder Woman.
Iron Man starts filming in February for a May 2, 2008 release, directly competing with a new James Bond film.