Robert Downey Jr. on Independent Approach to IRON MAN: ‘Marvel Lets Lunatics Run the Asylum’

There’s a lot of talk about how Marvel took a hiring risk Robert Downey Junior. recite Iron Man, as he was newly sober and hadn’t done solid work since returning to the big screen. Now we all know that hindsight is 20/20, and the studio’s gamble paid off big time, but it turns out that Downey was also taking a risk in starring in a Marvel movie, as at that point they hadn’t been try it. And the studio had no idea what it had on its hands in 2007, when the film was in production. So that first film was completely different from all the subsequent ones.

RDJ opened up about the experience and explained why he wasn’t afraid to dive into the film, telling THR:

“No, for anyone to know [Iron Man director] Jon Favreau – I remember seeing Swingers and that monologue he has, and I thought, ‘And he wrote this? Who is this guy?’ Also, he went to Bronx Science, and was doing improv in Chicago, and we’re both from Queens? We had to do this thing. There was also no real certainty that any of this would take off. Iron Man was a second-tier hero. They [Marvel] let the madmen run the asylum for a while, so it was a completely independent approach to a genre film to begin with.”

The appeal of the first film is what made Marvel what it is today, or at least what it was at its peak in 2019. It seems like maybe we need to go back to those roots.