Iron Man (2008)
- To accurately portray their role in Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. spent weeks conducting hands-on research and rehearsing directly with director Jon Favreau.
- Iron Man utilized mostly practical sets and locations to ground the story, a specific choice insisted upon by Jon Favreau.
Iron Man is a 2008 American superhero film directed by Jon Favreau, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. The film stars Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, a billionaire industrialist and genius inventor who is captured by terrorists in Afghanistan and forced to build a weapon of mass destruction. Instead, he constructs a powered suit of armor to escape and, upon returning home, refines the technology to protect the world as Iron Man.
The film holds enormous significance in cinema history as the inaugural entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the most commercially successful film franchise ever produced. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige took a massive risk financing the film independently after Marvel had licensed most of its popular characters to other studios. The casting of Robert Downey Jr. was itself controversial, as the actor was considered a liability due to well-publicized personal struggles, but his performance redefined both his career and the superhero genre.
Downey's charismatic, improvisational approach to Tony Stark set the template for the MCU's trademark blend of humor and action. Iron Man earned $585 million worldwide and received widespread critical acclaim, with the post-credits scene featuring Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury establishing the interconnected universe concept that would revolutionize blockbuster filmmaking for the next two decades.
