The highly anticipated sequel of 2010, Iron Man 2 has been described in many different ways as brilliant, is also being called a Money Machine making $100 million overseas. The man behind director, Jon Favreau, can be given credit for the film's dialogue, that wasn't improvised by the great Robert Downey Jr. Mr. Justin Theroux.
Movie Web recently got the chance to sit with Justin Theroux as he "draws the blueprints for Iron Man 2" in this new Interview. He also shares who he would want to be in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Can you talk about coming aboard the film and how you first began hashing out ideas for the story with Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr., Kevin Fiege and Marvel Studios?
"It was pretty cool they didn't ... it wasn't like anyone came in with an agenda. Marvel didn't come in going, "Here is what we want to do and here are the villains you have to use. You have to make sure there is Captain America's
Shield," you know, nothing like that. Jon definitely didn't come in that way, he came in very even and basically everyone got to sort of unpack their trunk of ideas. Really the question that was put forth was, what is the most dynamic, interesting, great movie that we can make for the fans that's going to impress them as much as possible and also obviously stay on story for the world that Marvel is created. So it really was like a very organic, agenda-less, beginning. Everyone got to sort of put their two sense in about, you know, here is what I loved about the first one and here is where I see it going. We sort of then pooled all those ideas and basically just started talking about things that we loved, the ideas that we loved that hit the table. We sort of just picked them up and examined each one. Eventually we busted out the catalog and the library of villains, baddies and goodies as well, and tried to figure out what jived with the storyline that was starting to form. It really was remarkably low pressure but also exciting to really just from the ground up sort of build a story around what happens when someone says, "I am Iron Man."
You mentioned that Marvel didn't tell you what characters you had to include in the script however they are continuing to set up "The Avengers" film with references and characters in this movie, so did you feel pressure to include characters like Nick Fury, for example?
"They didn't say that but we knew we had to get Nick Fury in there just because he's in the first movie, even though he's there for just a second, you can't ignore that. The same thing goes for Captain America's Shield, it's front and center in one shot of that movie, actually it's not, it's to the side and blurry, but it's something we knew that we wanted to at least pay some sort of lip service to. Then it's Kevin Fiege's job to sort of take the pollen, move that to the other worlds, cross pollinate those story lines and make sure that they all sink up in a way that works."
Was the idea of introducing Black Widow in this film yours or something that Marvel suggested?
"Well we didn't want Nick Fury to just show up and nock on the door. So we thought what would Nick Fury do? Nick Fury is such a badass that he would probably get someone in there that worked for him. So we had her show up as an employee of Stark as a notary and through her sort of sexy ways, infiltrates the inner circle, then becomes someone he hires and its all part of Nick's master plan. So she ended up being a character that we wanted to use anyway because she was such a badass. Then we thought it would be cool if we had her working for Nick and this, that and the other thing. So then we threaded her in away that we thought was organic to Nick's storyline. We wanted Nick Fury to have his own thing going on."
The character of Howard Stark is seen in the movie through old film footage of him promoting his Stark Expo, which was a "World's Fair" type event. The character seemed reminiscent of Walt Disney, who often spoke about "The World Of Tomorrow." The film was clearly written and shot well before Disney's take over of Marvel Comics but is there any connection between Walt Disney and the way actor John Slattery played the role of Howard Stark?
"I know what you mean. There is, I know what you mean. It literally came out of the fact that I'm a huge fan of the World's Fairs. I just think they're great. So I thought that this would be exactly the kind of thing that Tony would do. Jon is also a fan of World's Fairs and in fact, lived and grew up across from the site of the '1964s World's Fair in a building called the Fairview. Kevin Fiege, independently, also is just a gigantic fair buff. The first movie I directed I shot at the Unisphere and we just all had a deep infinity for it. There is something so energetic and optimistic about that thing so we thought, here is a guy who says "I'm Iron Man," he's not going to make weapons anymore so what does he do? He's going to channel his resources and his energy into changing the world with a positive idea, which is really what the world's fairs were all about. We were already all buffs of Expos and World's Fairs so we thought yeah. Most of those things have some sort of a cheesy Walt Disney type, "Welcome to the World of Tomorrow" vibe and it just made us laugh. We thought it was funny, wonderful and optimistic. So we thought that would be great and something that Howard would have done, you know? So to pay homage to his legacy, Tony is like, "I'm going to pick up where Dad left off." So we have all that great Howard Stark, "Welcome to the World of Tomorrow" stuff, which is just what would have happened if he had had one of those Expos. There is no relation to Walt Disney and Disney buying Marvel. It was written long before but there is definitely a connection in that we watched Walt Disney doing that "World Of Tomorrow" stuff as source material."
"The way we created him came out of a storyline between Howard Stark and Anton Vanko, Ivan's father, and that during the Cold War they would have worked together as scientists in developing the arc reactor. We wanted to give our bad guy a history and a real reason to why he wants to kill Tony. So we thought, what if there is another guy? Sort of a son story where Tony is the son of one guy and Ivan the son of the other, but what if one guy has been given everything? Millions of dollars, an amazing education and a successful company and what's the other version of that guy who was just as smart as Tony but was raised at the end of a whipping stick, just sort of wore a dog collar his whole life and who also has a major beef with Tony because of his circumstances? He sees Tony as the guy who is singularly responsible for his circumstances. So it's s guy who is probably as smart as Tony but is just more of an ingrown hair version of Tony. So what would he create? What kind of weaponry would he create? When we saw the Whiplash character we thought Whiplash would be a great guy to sort of embody that and create these energized whips that are just down, dirty, nasty cutting things. What is sort of the most barbaric thing that it could be? It could be a chainsaw but we thought these whips would perfectly represent that."
as there ever any talk of trying to fit the Mandarin, who was probably Iron Man's most famous villain from the comics, into this film?
"Yeah, we tip our hat to that but that's a tough one to get in because it's such a big storyline. So that, I don't know, and I don't dare say it but it might feature in Iron Man 3, I don't know?"
Finally, as an actor, is there any character in the Marvel Universe that you would like to play yourself?
"I don't know? Hawkeye would be great. No, I don't know? Yeah that would be fun. We'll have to see because I've never even thought of that. We'll see."
To find out if Justin Theroux was an original fan of the comics, what was it like integrating the famous "Demon in a Bottle" storyline, and if he'll return for Iron Man 3, head over to
Movie Web, for the entire interview.