I, Robert

Page 1 of 3 View as a single page 5:00AM Thursday April 24, 2008
By Alyssa Braithwaite

Robert Downey Jr stars in Iron Man. Photo / Supplied

Take an obscure comic superhero, cast a former Hollywood wildman and you've got Iron Man - a bold and brassy opener to the blockbuster season reports Alyssa Braithwaite

Your average superhero movie tends to be more style than substance.

But when director Jon Favreau took on Iron Man, one of the original Marvel comics, he wanted to ensure the end result wasn't your average superhero movie.

Key to that plan was casting former drug addict, felon and Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr.

The director and sometime actor said he always wanted the Oscar-nominated thespian on board, but it took a little convincing to get the studio behind the idea.

"There was tremendous apprehension at the time, understandably so."

"[This was] a guy whose off-screen persona and on-screen body of work was going to define this role in many ways, and that could have been something that was rejected or something parents were not going to be comfortable with.

"But in my meetings with him I truly believed in my heart he was living a very disciplined, elevated life, and had learnt from his past and was unwilling to find himself in those circumstances again."

Favreau said his decision to cast Downey Jr as billionaire industrialist and genius inventor Tony Stark, who after being kidnapped in Afghanistan transforms himself into the superhero of the title, had already been vindicated.

"From the minute we cast him, the fans just rose up in appreciation and I think that made Marvel very comfortable with the decision, and once the film came together I know they wouldn't have it any other way," he said.

"Once I was able to cast Robert, I said there's the opportunity to make what happens between the action set pieces equally, if not more interesting than the action," Favreau says.

"It was an opportunity to overcome my greatest misgiving about the potential outcome of this film, which would be that it was a mediocre, big-budget action movie that would make money and disappoint fans of my work.

"Robert offered the opportunity to play the type of humour that I like, the improvisation sort of feel to the material, and of course he helped attract the wonderful cast."

That line-up includes Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow, and Oscar nominees Jeff Bridges and Terrence Howard.

For Downey Jr it meant getting into shape as there would be tough fighting scenes involved - and, of course, that action-hero badge of honour, the plastic figurine.

"They literally have a scan of the exact proportions of your body, better than any sculptor or any artist could do - it's the real deal," says Downey.

"So then they just took the head part and shrunk it down and made that up and sent it to me for approval.

"You want to talk about a Freudian moment, they sent me a shrunken version of my own head!

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