1. 2008's Iron Man famously kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe, leading to the bigeest box-office film of all time in the form of Avengers: Endgame, but 18 years before the debut MCU release the first plans were afoot for Iron Man to arrive in cinemas in an entirely different production.
Back in 1990 Universal Pictures announced they were to produce an Iron Man movie, with Stuart Gordon directing, but after failing to make any progress on the project they sold the rights onto 20th Century Fox. Fox quickly set about developing a take, with Nicolas Cage expressing an interest in playing the lead. Again, it never managed to get off the ground.
Then in came Tom Cruise, who fell in love with the role and tried to kickstart the production himself under his newly formed Cruise/Wagner production company. Planning to both star in and produce the feature, Cruise went so far as to commission a script by Stan Lee and Jeff Vintar. Jeffrey Caine then did a polish on the screenplay. But still nothing.
In 1999, Fox made one last effort to get an Iron Man movie made. They approached Quentin Tarantino to see if he could move things along but that too came to nothing. The following year the rights moved to New Line Cinema. Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio and Tim McCanlies wrote a screenplay (that later leaked online) which featured a cameo by Nick Fury. Joss Whedon was in talks to direct, but then it went quiet again. By 2004, Nick Cassavetes was signed on as director, and an announcement made that the film would arrive in 2006. But further delays resulted in the project being cancelled and the rights reverting back to Marvel.
We looked deeper into the many attempts to bring Iron Man to the screen before the MCU here.
"The best and worst moments of Robert's life have been in the public eye. He had to find an inner balance to overcome obstacles that went far beyond his career. That's Tony Stark. Robert brings a depth that goes beyond a comic book character having trouble in high school, or can't get the girl."Favreau also felt Downey could make Stark "a likable asshole", but also depict an authentic emotional journey once he won over the audience.
3. Rachel McAdams was Jon Favreau's first choice to play Pepper Potts, but she turned the role down, uninterested at the time in a Superhero flick! Of course, 8 years later she'd star oppopsite Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange.
4. Tony Stark's computer system is called JARVIS (standing for "Just A Rather Very Intelligent System"). This is a tribute to Edwin Jarvis, Tony Stark's butler in the comics. He was changed to an artificial intelligence to avoid comparisons to Batman/Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred Pennyworth.
Paul Bettany recorded all his lines as JARVIS in just two hours. The future Vision later revealed that he had no idea which film he had agreed to work on, he merely read the lines as a favour for Jon Favreau whom he had become friends with whilst filming Wimbledon.
5. An early draft of Iron Man's script had the Mandarin as the main villain in the film, re-imagined as an Indonesian terrorist. In this early draft, Obadiah Stane was going to be Stark's friend and confidante throughout, and set-up at the end of this debut installment to take the place as the main antagonist, the Iron Monger, in the sequel.
However, Jon Favreau was worried how to handle the Mandarin successfully, so he decided to re-work the character into a behind-the-scenes presence and make Iron Monger the first villain. He stated:
"I looked at the Mandarin more like how in 'Star Wars' you had the Emperor, but Darth Vader is the guy you want to see fight. Then you work your way to the time when lightning bolts are shooting out of the fingers and all that stuff could happen. But you can't have what happened in Return of the Jedi happen in A New Hope."Another early draft of the script had Howard Stark, Iron Man's father, as a ruthless industrialist who becomes War Machine, and a scene would've revealed that it was Tony Stark who was the creator of Dr. Otto Octavius's tentacles.
6. When filming began, although the whole story was locked down, the actual script was not completely finalised so a lot of the dialogue was ad-libbed throughout. Jon Favreau acknowledged this made Iron Man feel more natural. Robert Downey Jr. was known to ask for many takes of one scene since he kept wanting to try something new. Gwyneth Paltrow, on the other hand, later admitted that she had a difficult time trying to match Downey with a suitable line, as she never knew what he would say.
7. When Robert Downey Jr. was carrying out motion-capture work for Iron Man he would sometimes wear the helmet, sleeves and chest of the armor over the motion-capture suit to realistically portray Iron Man's movements. The whole suit combined weighed over 90 pounds.
For some of the pick up shots of the first incarnation of the Iron Man suit, director Jon Favreau performed the motion capture himself.
8. Iron Man was the last movie the legendary special make-up effects creator Stan Winston worked on before his death. His Stan Winston Studios designed and built an animatronic puppet of the Iron Monger that stood 10 feet tall and weighed 800 pounds. It was built on a set of gimbals to simulate walking and required five operators to run it.
9. There were a couple of nice references to the classic 1960s Iron Man cartoon featured in the movie. Rhodey's ringtone when Tony Stark calls him is a midi version of the theme music from that series, and in the scene where Tony and Rhodey are walking through the Casino in Las Vegas the music playing is a smooth jazz version of the same theme song.
10. When filming first began Agent Phil Coulson, played by Clark Gregg, originally had a very small part in the movie. In fact the character didn't even have a name, the script just referred to him as 'Agent'. But thanks to Clark Gregg's chemistry with all the other actors his role was fleshed out and additional scenes were written to include him, and then even more during some late re-shoots. And we all know what that led to.
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