Kevin Feige Talks IRON MAN 3; Comments On Cameos, 'Iron Patriot', 'The Mandarin' And More

Robert is very gung-ho about doing his own stunts, but he's also very safety conscious and aware of his limitations. He wasn't even attempting to do anything above or beyond what would be considered safe - it was just a wire-assisted leap from one platform to another, and he came down in the wring position on that ankle. It was a good old fashioned accident. The silver lining was that Shane started to work on the cut and continued to work on the script, and hone and refine the movie itself.

It's an amazing sequence. The first time we looked at an animatic of that sequence was well over a year ago. It was one of the first signs that Shane was going to bring a level of spectacle you hadn't necessarily seen before, as well as all the Shane Blackisms that this movie is chock-full of.

Avengers was a risk. Casting Robert Downey was a risk. We like taking those kinds of risks, and Iron Man 3 is full of risks. I wouldn't say those risks were ratcheted up or down because of the success of The Avengers. It basically boosted our confidence that the risky way to go is often the best way to go.

This is all about how he was affected by the events of The Avengers, and how his world and mindset can be affected by that. By the end of Avengers, when a portal is opened up in Manhattan and he's met Thor and The Hulk and the Chitauri are coming down on him, he realises that he doesn't know everything; we think that has had an effect on his psyche, and then his world is blown out from underneath him.

Early - and very late - drafts of Iron Man 1 featured The Mandarin as a villain. The Mandarin is his most famous foe in the comics mainly because he's been around the longest. If you look, there's not necessarily a definitive Mandarin storyline in the comics. So it was really about having an idea. In terms of the Fu Manchu stereotyping that was involved, we never had any interest in that. He's relentless. Assuming that he's the one responsible for what happens to Tony's house, no other villain has been able to strike that fast and that hard at one of our heroes. He's very much about believing that the world needs to learn, and he wants to bend the world to his vision.

The notion in the movie is that a red, white and blue suit is a bold statement, and it's meant to be. With Rhodey, he's very much the foil to Tony's eccentricities, and in this one you get to see this and be reminded of the trust and friendship between them in that great Shane Black buddy-cop fashion.

Iron Man 3 doesn't feature any of the other Avengers, or Nick Fury showing up, or any of those world-blending conceits that the Phase One films had. You have to keep in mind that Iron Man 3 had been in the works for almost a year, year and a half before The Avengers was released. We're sticking to the vision for these films, and showing once again that these characters are just as interesting alone as they are together.

There's more suit action in Iron Man 3 than there is in any of the other movies. But there's also more Tony Stark action - just Tony as Tony when he's not in the suit - in Iron Man 3.