Iron Man (2008) - Forging the MCU: How Iron Man Reinvented Robert Downey Jr, Marvel, and Cinema - The Fandom Portals Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
that the reason he advocated for Downey was because
that the best and worst momentsof Robert's life have been on
display in the public eye and hehad to find an inner balance to
overcome obstacles that wentfar beyond his career.
And he said that's literallyTony Stark.
Hello everybody and welcome tothe Fandom Portals podcast, the

(00:32):
podcast that explores howfandoms can help us learn and
grow.
I'm Aaron and, as always, I'mhere with my co-host, brash
Brash.
What's going on with you today?
How are you?
Why aren't you wearing thepyjamas I bought you?
That's an Iron man line.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
It sure is.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, buddy, that's a good one, and the reason you
said it is because we're doingIron man from 2008, the very
first movie in the MCU.
We're ending our Marvel monthwith the way that the MCU all
started.
It's been a big month for usMarvel-wise.
How do you think it's gone sofar?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Good, a lot of Marvel .
I've even watched a bunch ofother Marvel stuff because we're
just watching Marvel.
So it's been a lot and I'm glador, after Thunderbolts, I
suppose I'm going to be glad tomaybe have a little bit of a
break from Marvel, with alsoDaredevil wrapping up as well.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, same as me.
I think it'll be a good palatecleanser after Thunderbolts and
then we'll have a bit of a breakbefore, obviously, fantastic
Four comes out, which we're allvery, very keen for.
But, guys, before we get intowhat we're going to be learning
about in this podcast this week,about Iron man from 2008, we're
going to do our gratitudes.
I've had a pretty good week, soit was very tricky for me to

(01:39):
find a gratitude, because I'mgrateful for lots of the things
that I do have.
But I am grateful this week forsnacks, because watching all
these Marvel movies with somegood snacks, especially around
Easter time, if people celebrateEaster, there is no shortage at
the moment of snacks, andthat's also like first world
problems, I guess.
But chocolate eggs, man, reallygreat to eat on the couch in

(02:01):
front of a Marvel movie watchingIron man, save the world, and
you're just stuffing your facewith chocolate and getting
larger and larger by the second.
But comfort food, man, that'swhat I'm grateful for.
What about you?

Speaker 2 (02:11):
I'm grateful for good graphics.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, we were talking about this before.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Give me more.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Tell me why.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, I love good storytelling and I love video
games and I love when the twoare together and when it pairs
with good graphics, it justmakes it like it's.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
It's like a cinematic movie that you're involved with
yeah, it increases theimmersion because I currently
playing um clear, obscureexhibition 33 and it's fantastic
yeah, I walked in to do thepodcast today and the music was
awesome in the soundtrack, butthen also I looked at the screen
.
I was like, holy crap, is thisa game?
Ps5 man, it's just nextgeneration of graphics.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
It's so good oh yeah, it's absolutely fantastic and I
love this game so much so far.
It's it's like a blend of, likeyour final fantasies and your
dark souls.
It's just right up my alley.
Quite cheap as well.
We're talking about too.
Yeah, yeah, actually yeah for afor a brand new game and for
how good it is.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yes, it's cheap lots of opportunities for RPG
character building too.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
We looked at also so if you're into that kind of
thing, guys, our D&D sort of,our D&D love sort of took over.
We were like going through allthe skill trees yeah, and all
the abilities and things, oh man.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
But yes, we digress, we digress.
Anyway, yes, this week we aredoing Iron man from 2008.
It is the catalyst for the MCUthat started it all, and we
thought what better way to endour Marvel month than to finish
it with Robert Downey Jr and JonFavreau?
So this is a movie about a manwho's held captive in an Afghan
cave and he's a billionaire, anengineer, and his name is Tony
Stark, and he creates abillionaire, an engineer and his

(03:42):
name is Tony Stark, and hecreates a unique weaponized suit
of armor to fight evil.
But before that, he madeweapons and distributed them
across the world and thought hewas doing a good job.
But apparently he was doingsuch a good job that the other
side had his weapons as well.
So great for business bad formorality?

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Leveling the playing field, I guess.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Well, yes, and, yeah, that's how the movie sort of
starts out.
But in this episode of thepodcast you are going to learn
about how Tony Stark and RobertDowney Jr proved it's never too
late for a comeback and whytheir parallel journeys made the
character and the MCUunforgettable.
We're also going to learn aboutthe massive gamble that Marvel
Studios took on Iron man theyrisked everything on a troubled

(04:24):
actor and a not-so-sure thing ofa story and how this bold move
didn't just save their careers,it rewrote the rules of modern
cinema forever.
Lots of learnings today.
As we said, this is directed byJon Favreau, it was written by
Mike Fergus Hawk Ostby andobviously created by Stan Lee,

(04:44):
the legend himself, who doeshave a cameo in this movie.
Mm-hmm.
He does he does, and starringRash, robert Downey Jr, jeff
Bridges, terrence Howard andGwyneth Paltrow.
Now can you tell me what allfour of those actors have in
common?
What all four have in common,mm?
Besides appearing in an Ironman movie, the first hero movie?

(05:07):
I suppose I think so as well,but no, I was thinking more
along the lines of every singleone of those four actors.
The four top-billed actors areall Oscar-nominated or Oscar
winners.
Huh, so we had Jeff Bridges,who was obviously a
multi-Oscar-nominated actor, forthe Contender and Starman in
2001 and 1985, respectively.
And then we had Terrence Howard, who was the first cast and

(05:30):
also the highest paid actor onthis movie, and he was coming in
hot from Crash in 2004 andHustle and Flow, which he was
actually Oscar nominated for aswell.
Gwyneth Paltrow was the onlyone of this cast who had
actually won an Oscar for BestLeading Actress in Shakespeare
in Love, nominated for Chaplinin 1992.
And, funnily enough, he got areally meagre salary for this

(05:55):
role.
Do you know how much he got?

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Was it only like in my mind, it says $600,000.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Very close.
It's $500,000.
He got $500,000, but there wasalso some back-end deals that he
was able to include in hisremuneration as well, you might
say, and basically that wasMarvel Studios insurance policy
for him.
So if he stayed on the projectand he did a good job, he'd get
extra awards, because he alsohad a very tumultuous past,

(06:22):
which we'll get into in thepodcast today as well.
Budget of $140 million, grossed$585 million worldwide.
So we talked last week abouthow a budget might inflate due
to word of mouth, and this onedefinitely did so.
It got $98 million in itsopening weekend and then from
there, through word of mouth andhow good this movie was

(06:44):
everybody was talking abouttalking about it skyrocketed to
585 million dollars andbasically reignited marvel
studios.
That's the movie that we'relooking at today and we're going
to get into some of our hottakes.
This is where we discuss ourfirst thoughts on the media and
unpack the boldest opinions,from what surprises us to what
split the room.

(07:04):
We'll also highlight your hottakes from Threads, instagram
and Reddit's community.
So if you want to get involved,make sure you go and check out
the show notes below and you cando that there as well.
Okay, brash, which first seeIron man.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Actually, I would have seen it in the theaters,
but it would have been inCharlottesville.
It's either that or I waswaiting for it to come out on
DVD Because, to be honest, atthe time I didn't have high
hopes.
Yeah, nobody had faith in themovie.
Hey, I think I still went andsaw the movies and I was like,
oh, this is actually pretty good.
Yeah, I don't think I reallyhad high hopes for it,
especially coming off of Hulk,yes, which came out not too long

(07:43):
previously, but, but changed myview on it after watching it.
But yeah, no.
So I think I did see it in thecinema but, honestly, it was too
long ago.
I can't really remember when.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Well, that was pretty much the same thing for a lot
of people, because I think Ironman was definitely a B-list
character is what it's beenfondly called before and not
many people knew who Iron manwas, to the point where Marvel
Studios actually released threelittle animated clips publicly
as a marketing campaign to telleverybody that Iron man wasn't
just a robot, it was a guyinside a suit, named Tony Stark
as well.
So it educated the public asthey were getting prepared for

(08:18):
the movie.
Myself, in 2008, I used to workat an animal shelter, so I used
to work really early hours.
And in 2009, when I actuallyhad the DVDs, I came home after
a shift, watched Iron man andthe Dark Knight in the same
afternoon.
It was literally like the bestafternoon of my life.
So it was funny to me toactually remember that and think

(08:40):
that these two movies, the DarkKnight and or you know, yeah,
the Dark Knight and Iron mancame out in the same year.
That's just insane to me tothink about how good that year
of cinema was.
But I think for me I knew Ironman from the cartoon, but other
than that, absolutely no idea.
But he was one of the fewcharacters that Marvel still had

(09:01):
the rights of when they weregoing to make this movie and as
a result of that, you know theywere able to use him as their
springboard.
But let's look at what ourReddit and threads have to say.
All right, so if you're aperson that wants to contribute
to our Reddit and threads, youcan do so in the show notes
below.
The links are all there,because every single time we do
a movie, we put up a post thatsays what did this movie teach
you?
And I put up a picture of theiron man poster all the way back

(09:23):
in 2008, and we have on ourthreads that nicholas timothy
brown lee says that they learnedeven the most loyal co-workers
can betray you.
Good lesson to learn.
Red sabbath 13 learned that themilitary industrial complex can
be controlled by a capitalistafter he has a near-death

(09:43):
experience.
New factory classics says youcan't assume your ai assistant
won't one day be its ownsentient android that will fall
in love with you, a witch, andhave a ship of athesius moment.
So treat it well when you arebuilding your combat armor,
powered by your own heartreactor.
That is insightful, and I alsotell you that you know.

(10:06):
Um, what is it?
Something is 2020, what do theysay?
uh, hindsight, hindsight, that'sright, it's 2020, exactly um dn
vaughn 2.0 said that the mcuhates the no kill rule.
And I said what's the no killrule?
Because I didn't know what theno kill rule was.
And he said it's a rule wheresuperheroes don't kill yeah
people or things, and I said,well, that must have been an old

(10:29):
rule, because a lot of them dothat now and it's like a rarity
that they don't.
Yeah, I think that was crazybecause, yeah, I can think of
multiple scenes.
The one in my head immediatelycomes when, uh, iron man goes
back to the city that yensen'sfrom or the village that
Jensen's from, and he just goesand blows up all the terrorists
there.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
All movies are still getting like superhero movies,
getting bold like that, likeeven man of Steel, yeah, yeah,
that shocked me because he'smeant to be like the golden boy.
He's the boys guy, he's Baby.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
Blue.
I know, see, that's the onethat I think divided the
community on the no-kill rule,because everyone's just like we
love Henry Cavill but we don'tlove that.
Yeah, I was shocked.
And then Trey Fisher 101 saysthat you should never trust Jeff
Bridges.
Old Obadiah Stane, he looksgood.

(11:19):
He's a bald man.
He does look good.
That took like 10 years off hislife and I saw an interview
with him and he was talkingabout how he was thinking about
doing it and you know, thepeople in hair and makeup were
like shaving his head downshorter and shorter and shorter
in increments.
So he was not fully sold on thebald head.
But then it got to his hairbeing about an inch long and he
was like just get rid of it alland he liked it.

(11:40):
He said he'd always wanted todo it and this was the first
time that he was able to try andI think the beard makes it too.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
It's like a very strong masculine sort of
presence with that yeah, like abald person without a beard sort
of just looks weird.
Yeah, it looks like BruceWillis yeah or as my grandma
used to say Bruce Willis isprobably like one of the only
people I can that pulls it offlike really well, like Vin
Diesel.
Even Vin Diesel, yeah, he'slike.

(12:04):
Have you seen with hair, though?
Oh bro, he looks better.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
He obviously looks better without hair, and Dwayne
Johnson as well.
Man yeah, all those men lookbetter bald.
But yeah, with Vin Diesel, mynan used to say that he looks
like a boiled egg with eyebrows.
Oh yeah, sorry, vin Diesel, ifyou're listening, my name wasn't
a fan or isn't a fan.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
No, I suppose they all look pretty good.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
All right, let's jump over to our Reddit page.
So we have UnluckyBird2601 thatsays that the character of Iron
man is awesome and that RobertDowney Jr was born to play the
role.
And then we had Terry496 thatsaid Downey definitely killed it
.
I think that in hindsight thatis definitely the case.

(12:50):
Everybody looks at RobertDowney Jr as the catalyst for a
lot of things in the MCU At thetime.
We'll go into a little bitabout Robert Downey Jr later in
the podcast as well.
But it was also pretty wellreceived, yeah, even due to his
tumultuous past.
But I think that everybody knewthat his struggles mirrored
Tony Stark's and that was a bigdraw factor as well.

(13:10):
But I would also like to saythat when people say that he was
born to play the role, I doagree.
But I think that also kind ofdiscredits a lot of the hard
work that he did to actuallyperform the role, embody the
character, and he's gone on tosay lots of times in lots of
behind the scenes stuff that itwas definitely a creative and
collaborative process to bringthat character to life so many
times.
So yeah, I definitely agree.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
He was the perfect casting choice for that role.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
I think so too.
All right, and then we hadGubba Toriel that said the DC
universe would no longer rulethe superhero genre of movies.
So that's what they learnedfrom Iron man.
And I think that's kind of true, because before that they
obviously had the Tim Burton runof Batman movies.
They had the Superman moviesthat came out in the 70s, 80s

(13:55):
and 90s, for DC and Marvel waskind of starting to get its legs
in terms of the Spider-Manmovies that came out with Tobey
Maguire and also the X-Menmovies that were directed by
Bryan Singer.
So they were starting to get alittle bit of traction.
But the funny thing about thosemovies was they actually
weren't putting any money intoMarvel Studios' pockets because
they'd sold the rights to thecharacters to.

(14:17):
Sony and 20th Century Fox.
So yeah, I definitely agree.
I think that this really setthe sale for Marvel in terms of
being able to make money forsome of their own characters
again, but then also, uh, kindof flatlined DC for a little
while.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, or even still now, like they've had some DC,
has had some sparks of genius.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yeah, I think the outlier in that is definitely
the Nolan trilogy of Batman thatwe can just sort of.
There is definitely that for DCgoing on yeah the.
Nolan trilogy of Batman that wecan just sort of.
There is definitely that for DCgoing on, yeah, but I do agree.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
I think that there's not so much spark in the DC as
there used to be, because, likeit's like for me watching DC
movies now, it's sort of like Iwatch it and you know when
there's like something you'reforgetting, it's just not to be
a tongue or just that sensation,just like you've almost like or

(15:09):
a thought that you've almostgot, but you can't quite get it.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
That's like how I feel when I watch dc.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
That's a really good way to put it, man, because it's
almost there.
It's almost there.
It's got everything that yougot you like it's just not, it's
just missing something.
Yeah, it's just missingsomething, and that's how I feel
about pretty much every singledc movie that's coming out like
it's just missing that somethingyeah, I wonder what uh gun's
influence is going to be.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
It'll be interesting to watch that and comment on it
later on.
But we also have this commentactually blew me away from
Reddit.
It said you should love more,as in that's the username of the
person you should love more.
Says that my past addiction hadno say in my future, and I
think that was really poignantand also I thank you for sharing
, because that's literally thejourney that Robert Downey Jr

(15:45):
goes on and that also Tony Starkgoes on in this movie, and that
one hit me so much so that weactually kind of are going to
touch on a lot in our episodetoday.
So that was our community A lotof people praising Iron man.
Actually, I will read out thisone.
There's always one.
So there was some people thatweren't throwing ultimate praise

(16:08):
towards Iron man on our Reddits.
It says only use for questions,that's his name.
Says that people will praisethe shit out of something that
is undeserving if people spreadthe word enough, and I kind of
disagree with that because Imean I kind of agree, but in
this instance, in instancethat's a good point, because I

(16:28):
do also.
I do agree that people can jumpon hype trains a lot.
That's definitely a fact of themovie going industry.
But I don't think it applies toiron man, because one
mathematically the box officenumbers it made 98 million in
its first weekend and then endedup making 585, like that's word
of mouth and people wanting tocome and rewatch in the movie
cinemas.
But then also just watching themovie myself and looking at it

(16:50):
and thinking that not only is ita movie that teaches you lots
of things, it's entertaining.
It was groundbreaking.
This is a movie that likesolidified itself as something
new and different and itdefeated the odds against people
that really weren't expectinganything from it, from the
people that were making it andthe people that were involved.
So I definitely think that itis being praised for good reason

(17:11):
.
So only used for questions.
I think that in this case, iniron man's case, not so true.
But that person did go on tosay that, um, they think that
iron man three outclasses ironman one, and I'm not sure if I
agree with that either.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, and I think we've already spoken about this,
and you disagree with me, but Ifucking hated both Iron man 2
and Iron man 3.
Yeah, yeah, to me those werejust misses.
Yeah, and it's all because ofthe bad guys.
Up until Thanos came along,marvel had a bad, and it wasn't

(17:46):
so much the casting actorsThanos I think Loki in Avengers
was good.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
That came before Thanos.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Oh yeah, sorry, Loki sort of Thanos, because Thanos
was also in that movie, butLoki's an anti-hero.
Yeah, it was like like Thor,like Thor 2, like with the dark
elf.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
They definitely had a big miss.
In terms of villains, I thinkthe best one out of phase one
would be Red Skull.
I love it.
He was a good villain in thefirst phase of the MCU.
Wish he had played a bit biggerrole, yeah, or even continued
on after the fact.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah, Instead, he just dies and becomes a ghost on
fucking some planet.
Yeah, Guarding the um dies andbecomes a ghost on fucking some
planet.
Yeah, guarding the soul stone,but yeah, like Whiplash in the
second one, as I said earlier, Ienjoy Whiplash.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
I'll go on the record to say I enjoy Whiplash.
I love Whiplash, the characterand you also like.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
Mickey Rourke I love.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Mickey Rourke, the actor.
Never the two shall they meatthe writing like whiplash.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
He's meant to like.
He literally names whiplashlike something that's like like
I don't know, it's a play onwords because he's whips, but
like he's also meant to be.
Like like and Jake jumpingaround swinging off shit with
his whips and like just movement, mickey Rourke.
Well, I picture movement.
Mickey Rourke is not in mypicture yeah, he was a boxer man
.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Mickey Rourke was a boxer, yeah, he was a boxer.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
But also with boxing, yeah, you gotta move your feet,
but it's in like a, a smallarea, yeah that's true.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
That is definitely true, I think, for Mickey Rourke
.
In that movie, specificallyIron man 2, he perfected the the
villain's slow walk towards thehero in a menacing way because
that's the only speed he can gois slow, yeah, like especially
after the racing scene, when hewhips Tony Stark's car in half
and he's just slowly walkingtowards, like if he actually hit

(19:29):
it into like third gear orsomething, he probably would
have got to Tony before he puthis armor on.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Oh yeah, it has to have that sort of dramatic, like
Sailor Moon dress up.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Oh yeah.
Can I just say, though, youcannot deny that in Iron man 2,
the different ways that theyemployed his getting on with
Tony's suit tech, that upgradewas good.
The briefcase where he put hisfists into it and pulled his
arms into it, oh yeah that wasamazing, come on, man.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
No, like so.
Two and three, they wereamazing with the Iron man part,
but what let them down for mewas both the like as much as I
hate to say about Mickey Rourkeand Whiplash, but like the
villains, and because of theweakness of the villains, it
made the sort of story feel weak.
Yes, I can agree with that, andthe same like the second one.

(20:22):
And I hated what they did withthe Mandarin, how they, how they
fucked around and made a bigjoke about the Mandarins, uh,
about the Mandarin, and like howthey sort of they retconned it
by doing Shang-Chi, shang-chi,yep, and they were sort of
retconning it a bit and how,like, making the Mandarin, he
was an actor the whole time andstuff like that, but then the

(20:43):
real Mandarin was, um, was hisface that turned, made people
glow and explode and shit.
From the third movie yeah, Ican't remember his name Cause
it's so forgettable JustinHammer.
No, justin Hammer's Hammer Tech.
Ah, right, okay.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, we've, we've both forgotten it.
Yeah, yeah, I remember beingangry about the way that they
handled the Mandarin, butlooking back at it, I think it's
very difficult to handle theMandarin because he seems very
comic book-y in terms of how heis origin-wise, like he is an
all-powerful warlord with tenmagical rings that originate
from a spaceship that comes fromanother world that he

(21:19):
repurposed the technology for,and then he's also a very
heavily caricatured version ofthe chinese people.
So it's like how can they?

Speaker 2 (21:27):
that's a really sort of touchy area that they
probably didn't know how tocreatively they sort of did that
with um, the actor guy benkingsley kingsley yeah, he was
amazing in um chengchi um, butum, old trevor slattery but uh,
yeah, even that like that andyou'll never see me coming Like.
I loved all that, but to me Ithink they missed opportunities

(21:53):
with Iron man 2 and 3 with theirbad guys, all right.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
This is our Fandom Fact Face-Off segment, where the
hosts go head-to-head with thetrivia about the Focus movie,
learning new facts along the way.
The host with the least amountof points at the end of the
month loses and has to take thewinner to an all-expenses-paid
trip to the movies.
This month, however, brash andI have done a Marvel team-up and
we've earned enough points tosend one of our lucky mailing
list people to the movies.

(22:25):
So we already have our winnerfor that giveaway and they're
going to be announced at the endof this episode.
But if you wanted to join ourmailing list, which is at
wwwfandomportalspodcastcom, youwill receive updates on the
happenings at the Fandom PortalsPodcast once a month and you'll
also be the first one to knowabout any future giveaways that
we do.
So lucky winner to be announcedat the end of the podcast.

(22:46):
This phantom fact face off,brash, is just for funsies,
funsies.
I'm gonna go first.
Are you ready?
Okay, okay.
So this movie, iron man onemade in 2008, had a very heavy
presence of this particularbranch of American culture and

(23:07):
history, you might say, and itis one of the few times that
this branch of history, slashculture, was heavily supported
in a superhero film like this.
Do you know which element ofAmerican culture, slash history,
really supported Iron man in2008?

Speaker 2 (23:27):
I've got two.
Okay, either like military orindustrial.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yes, it's the military, so specifically the
Air Force.
They actively supported thefilm's production.
It was said that the Pentagonwas very excited about Iron
Man's portrayal of the militaryin such a positive light that
they granted the productionunprecedented access to all of
their hardware and facilities.
They even let them use theEdwards Air Force Base and they
trained actors like TerrenceHoward on using various

(23:54):
different equipments and howofficers behave and the
protocols for military and thespeech patterns and things like
that.
And they actually even usedreal life F-22 Raptor jets in
the film and some of the pilotsand actual military personnel
actually appeared in the filmalso.
And they also followed militaryguidelines in regards to weapons
and armor depictions, whichmade that realistic.

(24:15):
And they avoided portraying themilitary as an overly
fantastical element, which Ithink was important, because
Iron man is a weapons developerfor the military.
So if it was a fantasticalelement and Jon Favreau has gone
on record to say that anythingin a superhero movie is so
larger than life, so whatever hecould do to bring it back down

(24:35):
to the real world, he would tryto do and in making the military
a real life sort of presence,especially in 2008 when there is
a very big cultural knowledgeof the war in Iraq that was
going on.
I think that was reallyimportant for them to do.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, I like that point you made about the quote
from Jon Favreau bringing itback down to the Earth.
I think that's why I thinkMarvel has had such success,
because they're using thesefantastical creations of Stan
Lee that are always, like itseems, larger than life, but
it's always rooted in the real.

(25:13):
Yes, and I think, instead ofmaking some over-the-top,
blown-out sort of realisticelements, help just us normal,
unsuperpowered people likeresonate more with the movies,
yeah, and the characters too.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
I think it's really easy for a superhero movie to
have an unrelatable protagonistwhich really kills the movie.
But these marvel movies, thesemcu movies, have a really great
way of connecting us with thehuman side of this superhero and
also the human side, or thereal life side, of the world in
which they live in, and that wasone way that they did it.
So I thought that was good.
That's a point for you, brash.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
Which also is probably why I think, for me, I
liked Thor 1 better than Thor 2.
Yes, because Thor 2 was a bitover the top.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
That was like world hopping and grounded in
mythology, really in the Norsemythology, in terms of the, the,
the tree of life, or somethinglike that.
What's the Norse mythology for?
The tree, the branches and the?

Speaker 2 (26:12):
yeah, each branch is.
Each branch is a differentrealm.
Yeah, yeah, so I think I thinkyou're right there whereas, like
the first one, he like yourintroduction to Thor is he gets
banished to Earth and he losesall his powers, which is a great
way to make a godly characterrelatable to people, exactly.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, really great job.
All right, your turn.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Okay.
So Jeff Bridges is usually onewho's very meticulous about
scripts.
He likes to have a script, helikes to read it all the way
through, memorize it word forword.
In Iron man this wasn't thecase as a lot of things were
ad-lib, but he did say it tookthe pressures off and made it a
lot more fun.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
But he says a quote about why I did read this.
Actually, I watched him say itwhen I was doing my research for
this and he said it wasfrustrating at first, but he
said after collaborating with afew of the actors.
And he said it was frustratingat first, but he said after
collaborating with a few of theactors and talking about it, he
said it was almost like making a200 million dollar student film
which was.
And then he said that they allgot to just sort of get in his

(27:14):
trailer and talk about what theywere going to shoot for the day
and you know, downey would playa different character and John
would play different charactersand they'd talk each other
through the scene.
John Favreau would be on thephone talking to his writer
buddies to see what they wouldshoot for that given day and he
said it was kind of good to justjam.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
And just relax in that place, because he said
there was lots of frustrations.
But then when he realized thathe kind of let it all go and he
said that that also kind ofhopefully portrays on the screen
, which I think it did.
But I can imagine how it wouldbe, because he is a very
talented actor and he's got avery big breadth of
cinematography behind him yeahand he obviously has a way of
working and going into thisproject.

(27:52):
It was completely different.
So, yeah, good on him forsticking through it in that way,
because I know that a lot ofother actors may have been a
little bit more disgruntled yeah, yeah, there was one.
Oh, was it yeah is one of yourquestions.
Okay, if not tell me that?

Speaker 2 (28:07):
yes, yes, so 200 million dollar student film was
the quote he used very good forthe um for a while.
The quote he used to describefilming the movie.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah lovely, okay, so this question here, uh, I I
have to ask this one because Ireally want to talk about it.
So, so we know that Marvel hadsome tumultuous issues in terms
of its rights for its charactersand, as a result of that, the
rights to Iron man floatedaround various different
production companies.
As it was doing that, there waslots of different people

(28:36):
attached to the film to play thetitle role of Tony Stark.
One of those people was NicolasCage.
Another person was, uh, timothyoliphant was another one, but
there was one particular actorin the early 1990s and, oh sorry
, in the late 1990s and early2000s, who was very, uh, heavily
attached and even developed ascript in association with stan

(28:56):
lee to be a part of this ironman movie but, as a result of
creative differences, decided toexit the leading role.
Do you know who that actor was?

Speaker 2 (29:07):
I believe I do, because I've seen the memes and
the things that I thought aboutit Was it Tom Cruise?

Speaker 1 (29:15):
It was.
It was Tom Cruise and he saidthat he wanted a significant
amount of creative control overthe project.
And because he wasn't allowedthat and his script was it was
more tonally toward the actionblockbusters of the late
nineties, early two thousands,as opposed to this spy thriller

(29:36):
genre mishmash of of actioncomedy that Marvel was sort of
heading towards, and because ofthat he decided to leave the
project.
But as a result we did get JonFavreau attached who championed
for Robert Downey Jr, which wehave said is a very amazing and
awesome casting choice.
Obviously Robert Downey Jr hadhis personal struggles with

(29:59):
addiction, which mirroredStark's journey at the time, and
there was that reckless sort ofplayboy and that responsible
hero that was at odds with eachother.
And Cruise may not havecaptured that authenticity as
well as Downey did.
But Jon Favreau actually went onto say that the reason he
advocated for Downey was becausethat the best and worst moments

(30:22):
of Robert's life have been ondisplay in the public eye and he
had to find an inner balance toovercome obstacles that went
far beyond his career.
And he said that's literallyTony Stark.
He said Robert brings depth tothat character that goes beyond
the comic books and it's morethan the comic book character
just having troubles in highschool or they can't get the
girl.
So he wanted Tony Stark in thismovie to be a likable asshole.

(30:46):
And everybody especially duringDowney's constant yo-yoing into
rehab and prison but everybodywas always they were like
vouching for him.
They wanted him to do really,really well and I think that is
the exact same thing that hewanted people to feel for Tony
Stark and it worked out well.
It did, it did All right, yourgo Brash.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
So as we were talking about before.
People had some troublesadjusting to the sort of
craziness that was this movie intheir amount of ad-libbing.
But one person struggled themost because of Robert Downey
Jr's sort of quick-wittednessand sometimes struggle to try
and quickly think of somethingto respond back to him whenever

(31:30):
he'd make up one of his lines.
Do you know who that person was?

Speaker 1 (31:34):
I think, given the hindsight of it all, I want to
say Terrence Howard, because heobviously didn't appear in Iron
man 2, so there may have beensome disagreement there.
My other guess would be GwynethPaltrow, because she I think
she actually came off an actingbreak, Like she had children or
something and she came off anacting break, and because I read
somewhere that she took thisrole because it was the studio

(31:55):
was very close to where herchildren went to school so she
could spend a lot of time withthem and as a result of that she
was kind of just dipping hertoe back into the game of acting
.
So maybe that could have been astruggle for her.
My other guess would beterrence howard, so I guess I
could lock one in and I'll sayterrence howard that's culture
you're right in the second oneflip the coin.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Yeah, she, because, um, because he'd ad-libbed so
much, he'd asked for a multitudeof like reshoots, retakes of
like the same scene.
And she, she struggled thatbecause every time he changed up
and make something up new,she'd have to try and figure out
something else to do, becauseshe had no idea what he was
going to say.
Like she'd be like uh, uh andhave trouble like thinking of

(32:34):
thinking up something to respondto him because he'd want to do
so many reshoots, because he'dsay something like oh no, I
don't think I like how that sayslet's do it again, do it again,
say something different.
And each time she also like Idon't.
Like she probably didn't haveto, because if it was all sort
of like a similar line, sheprobably could just say the same
thing as a response, but Ithink, trying to go with the
flow of it all, she was liketrying to also.

(32:57):
She can't do things, but Istruggled because he had no idea
what he was going to say.
There's only so many lines youcan come up with for the same,
for the same scene god blessGwyneth Paltrow yeah, yeah
there's, uh, one, one um scenein the movie where it's towards
the end when sort of Iron Man'shitting on Pepper a bit and
she's like, oh, remember thatnight.
Um, yes, and she describes thenight like meticulously, and

(33:21):
romantically.
And then she's like and thenyou went to get me a drink and
never came back and left me onthe roof by myself and I was
like, huh, she remembered thatbut didn't remember that she was
in Spider-Man.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Oh, good old Wes.
Yeah, I think that that is justa testament to her character in
this film, because I reallylike how they played her off and
I read somewhere that JonFavreau wanted her to be almost
like the 1940s sitcom women thatwere alluring and attractive
but also kind of funny and couldstand up on their own and had
their own sensibilities andthings like that as well.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
I loved her Petrilla Pepper in the first one, I think
as she went along she sort oflost that zip, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
I love her introduction scene where she's
there saying uh, I've picked upthe dry cleaning for you.
Uh, there's a car waitingoutside to take you anywhere you
want to go and this this ladyyeah, this lady thinks that she
has the audacity to go and talkto pepper pepper.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Pepper.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Potts Like that, and she's literally wearing this
shirt of Tony Stark from thenight before.
From a one night stand From aone night stand, yeah, and she
thinks she's got the insidescoop.
And Pepper's, just like I, alsooccasionally take out the trash
when required and she's like,will there be anything else?
And yeah, Gwyneth Paltrow'sdelivery in that just absolutely
amazing.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, because amazing .
Yeah, because I love how shebecomes like boss bitch.
I love that.
But, like I said, in doing soit sort of lost her sort of
cheeky charm.
Yes, and like, if you watch,like the animated series,
pepper's always got that cheekycharm.
Yeah, she sort of loses thatand becomes a bit more stern and
just business focused, yeah,which which she kind of has to
do because she's running thecompany.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
She's running the company while, while tony the
company, while Tony is outGarmenting yeah, being a hero, I
guess.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
But yeah, I sort of miss that sort of zippy, sort of
zesty, sort of Pepper Potts.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
I also read as well or saw in a making of for Iron
man that her first scene thatshe shot was the ballroom scene
and she said she'd just comeback from having kids and she
was wearing this open back dressin front of lots of people and
she was really nervous.
And she said that it kind ofplayed into the role, because
Pepper was nervous at that timetoo and she was struggling to
keep up with Robert.

(35:30):
But she said she also reallywanted to work with Robert.
It was like on her aspirationslist, so she was really happy to
be able to get to do that too.
Did you know that one of herfirst roles was as young Wendy
in Hook?
Yes, yeah, yes, that was likeher third role, acting role, and
she was a young girl.
Yeah, anyway, shout out GwynethPaltrow.
All right, here is my question.
I got that wrong, didn't I?

(35:51):
So there is a very ingenuitivepiece of cinematography in Iron
man, all of the Iron man movies.
Whenever you see Iron man onscreen, there is always a really
awesome piece of ingenuity thatthey used in the cinematography
in terms of the heads-updisplay that iron man has when

(36:12):
we're seeing his face inside thesuit, and there's all the
different sort of uh computericons moving around.
That was really hard to achievebecause, uh, it sort of sit sat
between this niche of computergenerated images and visual
effects, where they weren't justrendering 3d objects, they were
actually making 3d objectsfloat around in space.
Uh, it was also hard to achievebecause they they kind of had

(36:32):
to get these objects to displaya sense of, they had to display
a sense of depth within thehelmet and it was just really
tricky to pull off.
But if you'll notice, the, theheads-up display actually
increases or changes as themarks of suits changes as well.
And the creators of of thisvisual effect were inspired by

(36:55):
two things.
One of them was Dave's helmetfrom 2001, a space odyssey where
you can see him putting incomputer inputs and it's
flashing up on his curvedinterface on his helmet and it
sort of shows along his face andyou are able to see Dave's
reactions and things like thatas well as the effects on the
computer screen.
So they're inspired by that.

(37:16):
But there was also a reallyimportant piece of technology
that came out in 2000.
And man, do you know what thatwas?

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Short answer I have no idea.
Long answer something maybewith VR.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
No, that was well, well after, but it was actually
the Apple iPhone and the iPod.
So the interface of the AppleiPod with the circular design
where you could quickly click onsomething and hit into a
subroutine, click the song thatyou wanted and then get straight
out that circular dial thatthey used in the Mark III suit

(37:50):
was actually inspired by thatinterface on the Apple iPod.
So you can see that Tony cancontrol his HUD display in three
ways he can hear things comingfrom Jarvis, he can control them
with his eyes or he canactivate them through his own
voice.
So you will also see thatheads-up display is turning a
wheel and selecting one thingand then popping new information

(38:12):
up on his screen, and thebeautiful part about it is that
it never obstructs his face.
So we can always get the visualemotional resonance from the
scene from Robert, as we need toas well.
So they use that compact,state-of-the-art technology that
Apple was bringing out thatreally featured in its
simplicity, to influence theheads-up display.
Yeah, yeah, I thought so,because one of the biggest

(38:35):
things that's a problem insuperhero movies is when they're
being their human self.
It's really easy for theaudience to relate to the
character, but every singlesuperhero wears a mask and as
soon as they put that mask onand sometimes they go through
the most emotional scenes whenthey're wearing their mask, but
you don't see any emotion on thehuman's face because of the
mask that's obscuring them.

(38:55):
So Jon Favreau wanted to avoidthat and really wanted to play
into how nuanced Robert DowneyJr was with his facial
expressions and give life toIron man while he was in his
suit, because so many peoplethought that he was just a robot
instead of a man inside a suit.
So they used that technology,which has become a staple in the
MCU now for uh, for thatpurpose.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Let's get into your next question the ending of the
movie was actually meant to bechanged and could have
drastically changed the rest ofthe Iron man movies going
forward.
But yeah, there was a part inthe movie that was meant to
change and it would have been apivotal for one of the
characters in this movie goingforward and could have changed a

(39:39):
lot of what Iron man 2 and Ironman 3 were going to be.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Is it a moment that happened in the movie that?

Speaker 2 (39:44):
was going to be changed.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yep, I know, at the very end Robert Downey
improvised the line of I am Ironman, yeah, and that actually
was a breaking of the traditionfor the secret identity trope
for superheroes, because thatwas happening all through
Spider-Man.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Fun fact, when Coulson was like oh, we're going
to say that Iron Man's yourbodyguard, blah, blah, and he's
like nah, that's a ridiculousidea.
That's actually how, in thecomics, iron man got away with
his dual identity Iron man washis bodyguard.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
That is actually true , yeah, very well done.
Another different oh, is it gotsomething to do?
I know at the end of the movie,terrence Howard, who plays
Rhodey, looks at an Iron mansuit and said next time, baby.
And then he never got that.
Next time, no, nothing to dowith Terrence Howard.
I don't know this one then.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
So Jeff Bridges actually said that originally
Obidus Dane was not meant to dieand that he was going to
possibly there's a possibilityof him returning in the future
Iron man movie.
I think I did read somethinglike that as well because he or
somebody said that they weregoing to open up the suit and he

(40:50):
was going to be gone.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Yeah, and then initially Obadiah Stane was
going to be the big villain forthe second movie and the villain
for the first movie was goingto be the Mandarin.
But due to the amount of riskMarvel was already taking with
Robert Downey Jr and the studiothis one being its first ever
studio financed film they didn'talso want to then risk making
the Mandarin the main villain,because he was just too hard to

(41:14):
adapt to a modern audience aswell.
So, yeah, I don't.
I think I kind of would likethat.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
I kind of would like that too, actually to keep
Obadiah Stane involved, yeahbecause I like Obadiah Stane?

Speaker 1 (41:27):
because, as we talked about before Tony Stark or Iron
man movies, they don't reallyhave very good villains.
In this movie, in Iron man 1,obadiah Stane's probably the
best villain that Iron man hasacross his trilogy.
But I like him not because he'sa good villain, but he actually
represents the part of Tony'slife that he's trying to forget
and avoid.
He and he's that constantrecurring fake facult and the

(41:51):
fortune that he's made ondestroying other people's lives
through his weapons technology.
That's literally the embodimentof Obadiah Stane standing there
, and that's why I think, eventhough this movie doesn't have a
villain, it has the iron mongerat the very end.
But I don't really watch Ironman and think that this climax
to this movie is the best thingabout the movie yeah.
I like Obadiah Stane because ofwhat he represents to Tony and I

(42:13):
think if they carried thatthrough then he would constantly
be reflecting and looking atthat choice that he made to turn
his company in a completelydifferent direction and I think
that's really central to thecharacter.
So I really would have liked ifthey kept him going across the
trilogy or at least all numbertwo.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
And he could have been supporting the shadowy
backing of someone like Hammer,yeah, or?

Speaker 1 (42:38):
even the real Mandarin, because he was
actually double dealing in themovie.
It wouldn't be a fast stretchto think that he was already
giving weapons technology to theTen Rings.
So why couldn't he continue todo that?
To rebuild a fortune underneaththe eye of Tony Stark in secret
, gaining power and accumulatingthat wealth and then coming
back to Because he could havebeen still selling, doing black

(43:05):
market deals and buildinghimself back up again.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
The one thing I do wish is I wish because,
realistically, no one knew whowas in Ironmonger if he had have
just gotten out and escaped,and the only people who knew he
was Ironmonger was like TonyPepper and Dana Circle and so
like SHIELD.
And the SHIELD who aren't likelaw yeah, like proper law.

(43:29):
He could have gotten out andthey could have accused him, but
if-.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
That's a better thing , too.
He could have been hiding inplain sight, and that would have
been awesome, because-.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
And then he could start up his own company and it
would be sort of like going inseparate directions.
So Tony goes off into hisplanet saving direction and arc
reactor technology and then in,like an anime series, he could
have started his own stayingcompany, staying company or
staying industries, and he couldbe in the weapons, the new

(44:03):
weapons dealer that StarkIndustries used to be.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Realistically that would work as well, because
whenever somebody who's at thetop of their echelon vacates in
anything, it creates thismassive vacuum and all of the
underling technology companieswould have been scrambling to
get that top spot.
Technology companies would havebeen scrambling to get that top
spot.
So who better to get that topspot than his former ally
becomes competitor in ObadiahStane, who would have the

(44:30):
know-how and the technologyinsight through all the dealings
that he's and the contacts aswell that he's had with?
Yeah, I think that that couldhave worked really, really well.
And Jeff Bridges is, as thevillain, like a very strong
on-screen presence.
There's more they could havedone with the Iron Munger.
I agree.
Good point, brash, that'sawesome.
All right, let's get into ourset secrets.

(44:51):
This is where the hosts lookbehind the scenes of the Focus
movie to give you a little moreinformation.
All right, brash, for this one.
I really wanted to talk aboutthe fact that this movie, for
Marvel Studios, was a massive,massive risk.
Initially, this movie was bornout of the fact that Marvel in

(45:12):
the mid 2000s was actuallybankrupt.
Comic books and cartoon serieseven though they can definitely
make a really good openinganimated sequence with excellent
music, like they did for X-Menand also with the Spider-Man
animated series Great at that,but not so good at the business

(45:33):
deals because by the mid 2000sthey'd sold off all their major
characters to other studios.
So in 2005, marvel decided thatthey're going to form their own
studio and they're going to bedistributed by Paramount Studios
, and the next few movies thatthey were going to be making
would be financed all on theirown.
So they actually took a loanout from Merrill Lynch, which is

(45:57):
an American bank, and ascollateral they posted the rest
of their character rights, socharacters like Thor, captain
America, the Hulk and Iron man,who they retained they actually
put them up as collateral for a525 million dollar loan to make
these movies.

(46:17):
Now, when they did this,paramount only handled the
marketing and distributing andnot the production costs.
So Marvel still had to payproduction costs to make their
movies and, honestly, if Ironman failed, marvel would have
lost the rights to all of theircharacters and the landscape of
cinema would have lookedcompletely different than it

(46:39):
does today.
Because, if you think about it,different than it does today,
because, if you think about it,in the early 2000s, fox had what
did Fox have?
Fox had X-Men and the FantasticFour and Sony had Spider-Man,
and it was said that Marvelactually didn't make so much
money from that intellectualproperty, even though,

(47:03):
especially Spider-Man andSpider-Man 2 made over a billion
dollars.
So, because of the deals thathad been done in the past
through the company, it wasactually really hurting them now
and Marvel really wanted tostart up this risky shared
universe plan and as a result ofthat and through leaders like
David Maisel, ike Perlmutter andAvi Arad, who was the head of
Marvel at the time, they backedthe strategy, even though they

(47:25):
were having internal doubts, andbecause of that we have the MCU
.
So I thought that that wasreally it was like a big,
massive risk to use thecharacters that you're known for
as collateral for a loan in amovie industry that had no
guarantee of success.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Yeah, it was really risky, especially that time,
because what only a couple ofyears prior to that, was the
Hulk yeah, which wasn't good.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
Which which, which interesting?
Yeah well, they kind of knewthere was the potential, because
blade was good in 98 and then,or it sort of sparked.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
I don't think a lot of people actually knew, though
that blade was marvel though.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yeah, yeah.
And then in 2000 they had thex-men movie that came out, that
you that that had a pretty bigcelebration surrounding it.
But again, marvel didn't makethat much money from those
movies because they had sold therights to the characters to the
other companies.
So, yeah, it was just a reallyballsy move from Marvel and in
retrospect you can look at itand think about that as being

(48:26):
probably one of the biggest andriskiest moves in Hollywood
history.
And it's funny that it'sattached to this movie of Iron
man, because they also madeanother really risky move that
we'll get into a little bitlater.
But in terms of the MCU andtheir launching strategy, they
knew that they wanted to make itcharacter driven and they
wanted to make the movies feelmodernized.

(48:49):
So in this movie, in Iron man,they shifted the location of
Tony Stark's capturing fromVietnam, like the Vietnam War,
to Afghanistan, because that wascontemporary at the time.
And the script writing was anightmare, as we've talked about
before.
It went through constantredrafts and it went to the
point where Favreau employed abunch of people that he kind of

(49:11):
called the Marvel InternalCreative Committee and there was
about six people involved in it.
Some of the people in it wasMark Miller and Brian Michael
Bendis and Joe Quesada, who arereally big comic book writers,
and the good thing about thatwas that they were trying to
balance authenticity andaccessibility for new people.

(49:32):
But if you get that many peoplethat are creative in a room,
you can create a big problembecause nobody's ideas get any
leverage or time, becauseeverybody has a good idea.
Yeah, so that was a really bigsticky part with that.
But Favreau knew that he wantedto blend action and humor and
also that realism, and he wantedthat to become Marvel's tone

(49:54):
and signature throughout theyears, which I think that he did
.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
Oh, John Favreau has been the pillar that are holding
up Marvel right now.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
Yeah, and also Star Wars during that time too.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Oh, 100 Star Wars he literally did the same thing.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
He went into Star Wars and reignited Star Wars.
So he's just like this reallycreative dude that just comes in
, and Robert Downey Jr actuallysaid in an interview that he is
the most creative yet poised manthat he has ever had to work
for.
Who is in a high stressenvironment, and he but he's
also one that will will tell youwhen you're messing around and
really pull you in line andhe'll tell you that he's not

(50:29):
responsible for your feelingsafter he gives you feedback.
You're a grown man.
You can you can deal with withthat element of it.
He's got.
He seems like that's hard too.
Yeah, he's got so much on hisplate that he has to do if
you're not comfortable.
And he had to sort of take thatline with robert as well, just
due to his history.
But I think he had a vision forwhat could work and when he was
coming onto the project hefavreau had come off elf, which

(50:53):
is now an amazing christmas andwell.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Some people actually.
No, to be fair, a lot of peopledo love that movie.
I know so many people love thatmovie.
I am not one of them.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Will Ferrell ruins it for me, but I think the actual
movie is good, it ruins it forme too.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just so annoying, I know.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
Man, I'm so glad I'm sitting next to someone who also
dislikes Will Ferrell, becauseI've been in so many circles.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
I don't dislike Will Ferrell.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
We dislike Will Ferrell on this podcast I love.
Anchorman.
We'll never do a Will Ferrellmonth.
I'll tell you that.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
I do like some of the stuff he's been in, but yeah, I
wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yeah, no, but then he also made Zathura, which I
liked.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
I love Zathra.
I watched that like just a longago I bought it, it bombed,
like apparently it bombed.
Which is just such a greatmovie.
It's like Jumanji, but space.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
I know.
And how could that not sell?
I know, right, because, yeah.
So he was on the hunt for hisnext big project and the one
that would define his careerno-transcript, timothy Oliphant

(52:27):
for the role of Iron man.
But he really, really thoughtthat Downey's experience in the
field of being a down and outactor and his work that he had
done since 2003, since gettingsober, mirrored that of Tony
Stark's transformation that hewanted to portray in this film,

(52:48):
that he would really get thecharacter.
But there was someone who washesitant and even disgruntled at
the fact that Robert Downey Jrwas going to be cast.
Do you know who?
That was?
Brash.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
Disgruntled.
Ooh, someone didn't like that.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
Yep, somebody didn't like that Robert Downey Jr was
going to be cast as Iron man.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
In the cast, or was it just in production?

Speaker 1 (53:08):
In general.
Oh just in general.
Yeah, ah, marvel, they fuckinghated the idea because obviously
they were already risking a lotof money.
Oh yeah, it's a big risk and youknow he's in and out of rehab
and jail was definitely notplaying to his strengths there.
But Favreau feverishlychampioned for Downey and

(53:33):
thought that he was a reallystrong.
He was facing strong internalresistance at the time and he
was in a good place to be ableto go through and complete the
role.
And he had these strictconditions that he for insurance
obviously because it was a highrisk of insurance when they
cast him, but there was alsosome sobriety clauses in his

(53:54):
contract and they also onlyoffered him $500,000 with the
promise of back-end deals aswell.
But in saying that, they, they,they sort of ended up calling
it Feige, ended up calling itKevin.
Feige said that it was thebiggest risk and it was also the
most important thing thatMarvel ever did in terms of

(54:16):
casting a character because ofhow well he ended up playing
Tony Stark, like he definitelybrought that realism to the role
and from watching the behindthe scenes brash he it was so
joyful for me to watch becausehe was just so happy to be

(54:36):
working like.
It was so amazing to see thathe was really involved with all
the cast members and eveninvolved in the special effects
team.
To the prop makers that madethe suit.
He was just so happy aroundeverybody he was so thankful to
he wouldn't even call them stuntdoubles because he felt that
they were also performing therole of Tony Stark Iron man as
well, because they wore like the90 pound mark one suit a lot of

(54:59):
the time.
He was just so grateful to beon the job.
And he said that he kind of hadthis epiphany when he was
shooting the scene where he wasin the mark one in the sand
looking up at the sun and therewas a desert storm that was
about to occur and he said thisis probably the worst conditions
ever.
But but looking around at thiscrew working with great people,
jon Favreau is just a beastbehind the camera.
And he said he couldn't be moregrateful to have been picked

(55:22):
for this role and honestly,watching that in research for
this made me look back at likewhy he's returned to the Marvel
Universe now, because I think hewas always an actor that really
wanted to be taken seriously.
He always was chasing that, notrelevance, but he wanted people
to know that he was talentedand everybody did.
But there was a but attached toit he's talented but he is a

(55:45):
slave to his addictions.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
And he wanted to knock that away, and he did that
through Oppenheimer when he wonhis Oscar.
And now I feel like he'sreturning to the roles that
brought him joy, which I thinkis the MCU, which is why he's
agreed to come back as as DrDoom Cause I think he likes
working in the environment.
I think it really brings himjoy.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Yeah, and I love that for him.
I still don't love him, sorry,I'm sorry.
I like I will.
Actually I will hold out injudgment until I actually see
how they run it.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
It'll be interesting to see how they end up doing it,
and we have talked about it onthe podcast before.
But I'm optimistically curious,more so from doing research on
this film because I just knowhow much he enjoys.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
No matter what he does, he's probably going to do
a spectacular job, but, yeah,I'm more so.
My worry is more so about thecharacter rather than the actor.
He'll do a fantastic job, butI'm more worried about because
Doom is one of, if not the mostdetrimental bad guys in the

(56:49):
Marvel universe in general.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
I don't want them to mess it up.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
Yeah, yeah that's mirrored by a lot of people.
Brash, I'm definitely sure,because as much as I will In
general.
Yeah, he definitely is, and Idon't want them to mess it up.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's mirrored by a lot of people.
Brash, I'm definitely sure,because as much as I will love
and always watch a Marvel moviewatching Iron man 1 for this
again I could see where themagic started and you could sort
of see the hopeful glimmer.
And if you remember watchingthese movies, when the last one
came out, it was the first timeanybody would stay in a cinema

(57:20):
past the credits because theywanted to know what was going to
happen next.
It was that kind of magic aboutwhat was what.
The connection was and that wassomething that this, this movie
, also birthed was the, the postcredit scene, which has been
adopted by lots of differentmovies, even most recently by
Ryan Coogler in Sinners, whichis not anything related to
superheroes, but it's justalmost like a staple or like a

(57:45):
postscript that cinematographersuse or directors use now, and
that's as a result of Marvel.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
I always love those scenes because, even if it's a
movie that has a clear end, evenif it's a movie that has a
clear end, it gives apossibility of future movie,
future stories being told.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
Yeah, I think they work best when there is a plan
and you can tell that there's aplan for the future and how that
character that appears in thepost-credits scene will be used
in the future, like the one atthe end of Iron man, when Samuel
L Jackson's there as Nick Furyand just says the word Avengers,
yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly.
So you think, okay, that's goingto happen, moving forward, we
know what that's all about.
And also, can I just say forthe comic book fans of the time,

(58:25):
when they saw samuel jacksonplaying nick fury, who the
character was modeled after inthe ultimate avengers universe
in the comic books, that wouldhave been just like amazing to
look at and watch and see,because that's fan casting 101,
you know, and I, who better toplay nick fury than the guy they
modeled the comic bookcharacter on for the revamped
avengers in the early 2000s?
And I think that not only didthis movie initiate the end

(58:49):
credit scene, but it also, aswe've talked about, initiated
the franchise building.
So this is the first chapter ofa much larger saga and those
post-credit scenes wouldindicate what was coming next.
That was also connected and Ithink that the best thing about
those post-credit scenes was.
It didn't have to be a directsequel.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
It could be like a nuanced sequel, For example,
when we saw little glimpses ofCaptain America's shield in
Tony's workshop and littleEaster eggs like that which
movies like Iron man invented aswell, little Easter eggs like
that for comic book fans to seeand find it's just like a really
great time in cinema.
And I definitely think that thelandscape of movies would be

(59:32):
completely different if Iron mandidn't exist.
Because if you think about theMCU as a cinema-going experience
over the last 15 years of ourlives, it's crazy to me to think
that that all started with onemovie and two really big gambles
from a studio.
Like that's insane.
There are so few things thatyou can trace back to a single

(59:55):
origin point.
But this is one time where youcan look at it and say that is
the moment that it occurred.
And looking back and seeing thatMarvel banked half of their
character rights on one moviewith an actor who had been in
and out of rehab, who had a verycheckered past, you know, if it
didn't work out how it did, youmight look at it and say, dumb,
that was really dumb, don'tmove guys.

(01:00:16):
Yeah.
But now we look at it and we'rejust like that is inventive
ingenuity and bold.
Yeah, we talk about it indifferent terms.
One thing I did wanted to sayabout the legacy of this movie
was there's something called theus national film registry.
Do you know what that is?

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
I'm guessing it's a registry that filmmakers have to
plan on to.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
Not quite so.
Every year there is a bigconsensus on what movies are put
into this film registry, andit's supposed to put in the most
well-crafted and intelligentmovies that are a commentary for
the times that they were made.
So, for example, if this filmregistry was sent out into space

(01:00:57):
and aliens found it, they wouldlook at it and be like that is
who humankind are.
So movies on there are thingslike the social network uh,
there's casablanca is in there.
Lots of different movies are inthere as well, and guess what
movie's in there?
Brash man, iron man, is inthere oh shit, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
look at the first, the very first scene where
fucking Iron man blows up anentire mountainscape.
They're going to be like holyshit, these guys have weapons,
oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
We are not going to be messing with them.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
Let's go ahead and beat them, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
And, I think, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and
its dominance over Hollywood.
I don't think it's somethingthat's going to be repeated in
our lifetime and it's prettyawesome that we got to live
through it.
But it all started with Ironman and I think, and with Robert
Downey Jr, and I actually don'tthink that it could have
existed without either of thosetwo things.
So that's why I wanted to talkabout it in Set Secrets, so
thank you for indulging me thereprobably everyone can sort of

(01:01:53):
look at and even use in theireveryday life.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Like it's okay to sometimes take those gambles,
take those big long shots,because they can sometimes pay
out.
Gamble responsibly.
Gamble responsibly, but I mean.
Like it's like work-wise You'rereally passionate about a job
but you're not sure you can doit.
And then an opportunity comesalong.
You're like, oh, that's goingto be way out of my league, way
out of my league.
Throw your hat in the ring.
You never know.

(01:02:18):
Like, take that gamble, likeyou may not get it, well too bad
, but you may get it and it maybe the best thing you've ever
done in your life.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
That's like the thing and we'll probably and do it.
There was a lot of things thatwere unknown and there was
definitely a gamble and lookingtoward it it was.
It was definitely a massivelychanging moment of my life and
it really made me appreciate,even though it wasn't like I've
now gone back to be being aclassroom teacher, so you might
say it was a failed experiment,I guess you could say, but you
know I'm not out of the runningfor other jobs like that, but

(01:03:05):
it's made me appreciate and bebetter at the job that I'm in
now as well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
So everything is learning yeah, and it gives you
another skill set yeah, exactly,all right, let's actually get
into our mvtts now.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
The mvt is the heart and soul of the podcast, where
we break down the one thing thathit hardest, stuck longest or
taught us something new fromwhat we just watched.
It's our moment to spotlightthe takeaway that made us think,
feel or see things differently.
This is what we learned fromiron man from 2008 br.
This week I kind of took thereins on the MVT, but I think
it's poignant, because my MVT isthat reinvention can happen

(01:03:43):
through adversity and hardship,and the reason I say that is
because there are multiplescenes throughout this movie
that show Tony Stark'sreinvention through adversity,
but behind the scenes, we alsosee Robert Downey Jr reinventing
himself through adversity.
And then, if you look a layerdeeper than that Inception style
, you'll also see that MarvelStudios reinvented themselves

(01:04:05):
through adversity as well.
So because, like these threemassive entities Robert Downey
Jr, the character of Tony Starkand Marvel all taking these big
risks, but all reinventingthemselves after going through
something very, very hard, and Ithink that's the main thing you
can take away, and I've got acouple of scenes here that sort
of illustrate that, and thefirst one that I can think of is

(01:04:26):
when he's ambushed at the startof the movie.
So he's going through in thoseJeeps and you can see the bombs
going off and he's very confusedand in that moment he's a very
arrogant character.
He's bragging about all theMaxine models that he's been
with, he's entering all thequestions.
Really funny when he realizesthat, uh, army person is
actually a woman.
Yeah, good God, you're a woman,yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
He's like oh no, I see your body structure, I can't
keep.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
I can't with one of the officers when he says is it
cool if I take a photo with you?
And he goes, yes, it is, it'svery cool.
He says no gang signs and thenhe does the peace sign.
He goes, yeah, peace, peace.
Sure I'd be out of the job withpeace.
I think that scene serves aslike a wake-up call, especially
when he is later than attacked,because it shows Tony as this
carefree individual who livesthis really lavish existence but

(01:05:14):
it's so fragile and it's takenaway from him straight away and
it's sort of the beginning ofhis journey towards
accountability.
And the audience witnessed thatshift in Tony's character from
real arrogance to reflection.
And Robert Downey Jr also doesthis because he's faced with a
moment where he's faced with theconsequences of his addictions
and he really has to get his acttogether to get a film role

(01:05:35):
like the one in Iron man.
He hits his personal rockbottom and that personal rock
bottom, or that ambush thathappens to Tony Stark, is what
catalyzes his journey from selfinterest to selfishness or
selflessness.
And I think that is really good, because Robert Downey's moment
changed his life and it alsochanged Tony Stark's life as

(01:05:59):
well.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
The Marvel movies, I believe, always have that sort
of hint of battling adversityand overcoming odds and I think
it's just and I think it's oneof the things that makes Marvel.
Marvel is like it and I thinkthat like, and I think it goes
all the way back to like StanLee's look on his creation of
Marvel.
He always wanted to have thatprojection of hope and bring

(01:06:21):
hope.
Because if you look at DC, oneof the only characters that
really symbolizes hope for me, Ibelieve, is Superman.
Yep, whereas nearly every singleMarvel good guy, their whole
thing is pretty much alwaysabout hope.
He's like Spider-Man he bringshope, but his whole young killer
is just innate.
Their whole thing is prettymuch always about hope.
Like you look at Spider-Man,like he brings hope but like his
whole young killer is just in,like New York, and I think he's

(01:06:44):
the friend of Spider-Man whoalways inspires hope in others.
And I think, yeah, it's a very,it's a very Marvel thing to
lean into that sort of givinghope to the people who feel a
bit downtrodden.
And I think Iron man just likecapsulates that, like perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
Yeah, I think it sort of comes to a head in the
moment where he, like he seesthe consequences of his actions
in terms of the other side usingthe weapons that he developed
against Americans his ownsoldiers and he's very guilty
about that.
But there's healthy guilt andthere's unhealthy guilt.
And unhealthy guilt is whenyou're looking at you and you're
saying I suck and there'snothing I can do about it,

(01:07:23):
because I'm the worst person inthe world for doing that.
But Tony Stark looks at thebehavior and says I have played
a part in this and it'ssomething that I can change and
there's something that I cangrow from.
And then when he comes back, hedoes two things.
The first thing he does is goesand gets a cheeseburger.
And the second thing that hedoes is he holds a press
conference.
And that's almost like thataccountability thing as well,

(01:07:43):
because I don't know about you,but I could say I'm going to go
to the gym 25 times, 25 morningsin a row and I won't do it.
But if I tell people and I havesomebody that I'm meeting at
the gym and make it a publicthing, then it's something I'm
accountable for.
So he held a press conference.
Tony Stark held a pressconference, told the world that

(01:08:04):
he was going to change his wayscomplete 180, no longer do his
do weapons and do humanitarianinstead pretty much yeah, and at
that moment he tookaccountability for the actions
that he took in the situationand was then committed to
changing and becoming areinvented version of Tony Stark
.
And along the way, there waslots of people that were

(01:08:24):
doubting him.
Obadiah Stane was resistant tochange.
Pepper was even resistant tochange, and she's not somebody
who benefits from weaponsmanufacturing no, but she cares
about Tony.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
Yeah, and one of the things that we generally touch,
touched on was um terencehoward's um roadie.
Like at that prince conferenceI like tony, style robert daniel
jr.
He, playing stark, literallysaid I watched my weapon, um, my
weapons I made to protect ourpeople, our citizens used
against them.
And then in the next scene,when um tony goes to roadie,

(01:08:58):
who's a friend of his, likewho's his friend mentor, like
goes to him and goes oh hey, I'mlooking to get your help with a
new project right.
And he's like oh cool, you'remaking weapons again.
He's like, no, I've got anotherproject.
He's like what?
No, you should be makingweapons.
Yeah, it's like, dude, aren'tyou his friend?

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
that's.
That's actually the thing Inoticed on a rewatch is the fact
that roadie was militaristic tothe point where he knew tony
for who he was before and waseither ignorant or resistant to
the fact that he was doingsomething different and that
kind of stopped him from jumpinginto the role of war machine
quicker than he actually didcould have yeah, yeah, I noticed

(01:09:36):
that on that on the rewatch aswell, but I think that that also
mirrors Robert Downey Jr'sstruggle, because after he
announced his sobriety, as JonFavreau said everything he did
was in the public eye.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
And after he announced his sobriety, he was
accountable for that.
He's a person that lives in thepublic eye, so he was
advocating for himself to getmore and more work and
eventually all the dominoesbuilt up to the point where he
was given an opportunity.
He took it with both hands andhe created this amazing
character which spawned anentire cinematic universe.
Like there's so many parallelsbetween Robert Downey Jr and

(01:10:09):
Tony Stark, but I like in thismovie that, despite all that
oppression and doubt fromeverybody that was around him,
literally every major character-yeah, well, he literally goes
after jarvis.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
God bless jarvis after he spoke with uh roadie
terence howard, and ten hours islike basically like why don't
you go get some rest and comeback to me when you can start
making?

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
everybody was saying that, when they were saying your
delusion will get some restjust rest and then come see me
when you're making weapons again.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
And then he, when he literally goes back to his house
, he's like um and he has themark one up and he's throwing
stuff in the trash like trash,not trying to reinvent it.
He's like um, I don't know who.
Like he's saying jobs, I don'tknow who I can trust.
I'm gonna keep this on mypersonal server.
Yes, because like that meanslike his long-lasting friend
roadie is now someone he can'ttrust because he saw that bad

(01:10:55):
guys were using his weapons ontheir soldiers and his friend
Rhodey, who is a soldier, isjust so nonchalant about it.
Yeah, like dude, they're usingit against our soldiers.
That includes you.
You are a soldier for ourmilitary.
I want to stop making weaponsuntil I can figure out what's

(01:11:17):
going on, so no more of myweapons can be in the enemy's
hand to kill our own people.
How are you not okay with that?
Yeah, you just want me to keepmaking weapons that keep falling
into the bad guy's hands thatthey keep using against us,
especially after he's justdemonstrated something as
powerful as the Jericho Jericho,you can literally wipe out a
city.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
But yeah, I think it doesn't take Rhodey long to turn
around and realize that hisfriend is on a different path,
and I think that that's alsosomething that is cautionable to
people that are in the middleof a big sort of change.
Like that, if you're changingsomething that you feel like you
need to change, and there arethose resistant factors, it can

(01:11:55):
happen because the people whowish you well are worried about
you changing that, um, which isthe case for pepper.
And it can also happen because,like, the people are used to
how you've been presenting and,as a result of that, you kind of
it kind of worries them thatthere's that drastic change yeah

(01:12:15):
, and I think it was Even thoughit might be something for the
better.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
Yeah, that you see in yourself the fact that there's
a change.
It might be worrying someone,being like is he okay, is
something else happening.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
But even for me, if my friend was doing something
like that, I'd probably Pat themon the back.
Yeah, respect their choice andbe there for them if it sort of
fell and crumbled around theirfeet.
But my, my opinion reallydoesn't kind of matter in that
moment.
Do you know what I mean?
Like that's, that's a choicethat they've made based on their
decisions.
The only reason that a lot ofdifferent people had a say in

(01:12:47):
Tony Stark's situation wasbecause he had shareholders and
it was a massive company and ithad worldwide ramifications of
his choice that he made.
But how hard would that havebeen for him as a character to
do when his father, who we knowabout?
Tony's relationship with hisfather has been different in
terms of there was love there,but it was almost like a need to

(01:13:09):
please.
So he has that need to pleasehis father.
But then he goes and prettymuch throws away his legacy in
quote marks from building allthese military technologies.
We later find out that he hadmore going on than that.
But he steps away from thatthrough the public sphere and
does something that he feelslike is better for him, and I
think that is the takeaway interms of reinventing yourself,

(01:13:30):
that you will probably faceadversity and you'll probably
face questioning, sometimes frompeople you expect a lot of the
time from people you don't.
But if you feel like it's theright thing to do, then, like
Tony Stark did, you push on andyou become Iron man and you save
the planet.
So the takeaway here is justbecome Iron man Well everybody
has their own version of Ironman, and you don't always need
billions and billions of dollarsto do it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
Every kid out there, go and make yourself a suit and
then try and cutting that we arenot responsible for any iron
man suits flying around.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
But yeah, I think that there's definitely some
moments of of thought that cango into that reinvention sort of
process, because there's alwaysgoing to be people that are
dubious of your change and ifyou believe in it enough, you
can push through thatquestioning and that dubiousness
.
But it also takes a little bitof self-resilience to know that

(01:14:22):
this is the choice for you, thisis the choice you want to make
and to go forward and getthrough it so, if you are making
the changes and you do havefriends that are cautious about
it, don't write them offimmediately, because there are
some.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
There are some that're going to be fueled by
like jealousy or the bad side,but there are people that are
going to be just be fueled by,like, their sense of like their
worrying or sense of concern,concern and cautious about the
change.
Um, just give them a time andlike, if it's, if, if the choice
is in your mind for somethinggood or a good change, then yeah

(01:14:57):
, they'll come around to it.
But yeah, don't dismay peopleif they don't automatically
agree with your choice.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
Yeah, and you can look at both of the characters
of Obadiah, stane and Rhodey inthose two lights.
There are some people that willdefinitely be questioning you,
which both of them did to TonyStark.
However, rhodeie eventuallycame around to tony's point of
view because he believes in hisfriend over what his friend has
dark industries to the military.
That's his job.
Yeah, that's on the line, buthe was more associating the

(01:15:26):
change with is this better formy friend's well-being?
As opposed to obadiah, who's theconverse of that, where he was
more interested in what he wasgoing to lose in terms of
funding, money, prestige,because the deal that Tony's
going to be making now isirrelevant and all the work that
he'd put in has gone towardsnothing, and that has absolutely
zero to do with how he feelsabout Tony as a person, and

(01:15:48):
everything to do with howObadiah feels about his status
and his choice to stop tradingweapons affects him personally.
So when people make changeslike that, there will be the
roadies and there will be theObadiahs, and I think that you
have to let go of the Obadiahsand embrace the roadies and the
Pepper Potts and the PepperPotts.
I think it's summed up in aline where Tony says I am Iron

(01:16:10):
man because he accepts his newperson irregardless of what
everybody else thinks and does.
He's just like I am Iron man,and he does it again.
He tells the public, he tellsthem this is who I'm going to be
, this is who I've chosen to be,and again, rhodey's like stick
to the cards.
But once he does that and hesays he's Iron man, he's kind of
supportive again.
Alright, are you ready to rateit?
Go ahead, okay, alright.

(01:16:38):
All right, this is our fandomportals on a board.
It's time to rate and rank it.
Each host gives the movie ascore out of five.
We then take the average andadd it to our official
letterboxd on board.
If you want to follow that, youcan do so.
Just go on to letterboxdcom andfind us at fandom portals.
Brash, I gave this four starsand I gave it four stars because
, as we discussed, I don't thinkthe villain is villainous
enough.
I think he represents qualitiesof tony stark, which I loved.
Gave this four stars and I gaveit four stars because, as we
discussed, I don't think thevillain is villainous enough.

(01:16:58):
I think he represents qualitiesof Tony Stark, which I loved,
but I feel like that a goodvillainous presence is important
for movies like this.
I think that the visual effectswere amazing.
I think the story as a wholewas good.
I liked how grounded it was andhow much we learned about Tony
Stark, so I think four starsfits for me.
What about you?
How grounded it was and howmuch we learned about Tony Stark
, so I think four stars fits forme.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
What about you?
I actually agree.
When I first saw this, Iprobably would have graded maybe
4.5, just purely because of,like the fact that, holy shit,
marvel did something good, yep.
But yes, no, I have to agree.
Definitely four because it is a.
It's a solid origin story.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
Solid origin story, absolutely Solid origin story.
But because it's so focused onthat origin story it does leave
the whole hero beating thevillain sort of aspect of a
superhero movie, less than whatother movies would be.
But yeah, and then they said itlooked amazing like the armor

(01:18:01):
First thing that did.
Holy shit, I can't get one.
And yeah, overall just a solidfoundation for what could be
built.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
Yep 30 Reckon.
So we've got three movies thatsit at four like an average
rating of four.
We have 500 Days of Summer,star Trek and Big Fish.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
I reckon it beats all three.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
I think that it does too.
The next one above it isPhantom of the Opera, so I think
that sits perfectly.

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
All right.
So with an average rating offour, that means that Iron man
will be fifth on our fandomportals.
On a board, it will be justbehind the Phantom of the Opera
and it will be above 500 Days ofSummer.
So that is our rating and thelast rating that we are going to
be doing for our Marvel MonthBrash.

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):
It is, it is Marvel Month is over.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
Marvel Month is done, so we'll be moving on to our
regular programming in the monthof May.
We'll do our signups now, allright.
Thank you everybody forlistening.
We really do appreciate yourtime, and if you would like to
have some more information aboutthe fandom portals podcast, you
can do so by joining ourmailing list, which is at

(01:19:14):
wwwfandomportalspodcastcom, andin that mailing list we will
only email you once per monthand it will include all of our
giveaway entry instructions andit will also give you an update
on what's happening with ourpodcast.
We have been running a giveawaybrush and we have a winner for
our giveaway.
Yeah, so we have been givingaway and offering everybody the

(01:19:35):
chance to win a family pass tothe movies of their choice.
And, rhys Crook, thank you forjoining our mailing list and
becoming the winner of ourgiveaway.
So we'll be in contact with youto make sure that you get your
prize.
Thank you for joining ourcommunity and to anybody else
that wants to be as lucky asRhys, you can do so by joining
our mailing list at that websitementioned before.
It is also in the show notesbelow Get it, rhys.

(01:19:56):
Get it Rhys.
Go and see the Thunderbolts.
All right, if you wanted to bea part of our community and
offer us your opinions on themovies that we watch.
You can do so on Threads,instagram and Reddit and all of
those places we are at fandomportals always fandom portals.
You can find us there and lookfor the posts that say what did
this movie teach you, andthere'll be a poster of the

(01:20:17):
movie, and they're the ones weread out on our podcast.
Okay, marvel month is over, aswe said, so that means that our
community picks will be back upand running, so look at our
socials for that as well, forthe movie pick for may, and we
always air them on the last dayof the month.
Next week.
Next week, we have an exclusiveinterview with Jeremy Drysdale,
who is a screenwriter whoactually wrote the movie In the

(01:20:39):
Line of Duty that's starringAaron Eckhart.
So I got the chance to sit downand have a chat to him, and
we'll be releasing that episodenext week.
After that, we'll see, we'llsee.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
This is the month of May.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
We'll have to talk about what we're going to do on
May.
Probably one Star Wars thing,sure well, that was my thought
yeah, also conveniently timed,but Iron man released on the 8th
of May 2008, so timing wise,we're timely, unintentionally
timely again.
Alright, that is all for today,guys.
Thank you very much for joiningus for Marvel Month.

(01:21:13):
Please share the podcast withsomebody who loves Marvel or
somebody who loves podcasts orsomebody who you think might
love us.
And keep learning, keep growing, keep loving fandoms.

Speaker 2 (01:21:21):
This is Aaron signing out this is Adam, with one more
thing to say.
He built this in a cave out ofscrap.
See you guys, see ya, you.

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Iron Man (2008) - Forging the MCU: How Iron Man Reinvented Robert Downey Jr, Marvel, and Cinema

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Iron Man (2008) - Forging the MCU: How Iron Man Reinvented Robert Downey Jr, Marvel, and Cinema