Yahoo News Robert Downey Jr. Says He’d “Happily” Return as Iron Man, Regularly Threw Out His Dialogue
Robert Downey Jr. may have recently won his first Oscar for Oppenheimer, but he’s not looking to run from his Marvel past.
In fact, the actor says he’d “happily” return as Tony Stark/Iron Man.
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“It’s too integral a part of my DNA,” Downey told Esquire in a new interview. “That role chose me. And look, I always say, never, ever bet against Kevin Feige. It is a losing bet. He’s the house. He will always win.”
Downey’s Iron Man met his fate in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame in what was arguably the most emotionally devastating moment in the 33-film Marvel Cinematic Universe. While Marvel Comics also always played fast and loose with character deaths, regularly killing off heroes and villains for effect, only to quickly bring them back, Marvel Studios boss Feige has previously said he’s rather protective of the moment Iron Man sacrificed himself to defeat Thanos. It makes Downey returning to the MCU increasingly tricky as the years tick by. A prequel story appearance would likely require CG de-aging (which still looks a bit awkward and uncanny valley), while a sequel return risks cheapening Endgame. Of course, Marvel could always set a story in a different universe, where anything is possible. Marvel continues to explore multiverse stories after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Spider-Man: No Way Home featured different actors playing familiar heroes. There have also been rumors of an Avengers: Secret Wars movie bringing back all the original Avengers, but nothing has yet materialized.
The Esquire profile also had an intriguing quote from Downey’s Marvel co-star Gwyneth Paltrow, who played Tony Stark’s assistant and wife Pepper Potts. Paltrow revealed she stopped learning her lines for MCU films due to Downey’s penchant for improvising and coming up with different (and better) dialogue at the last minute.
“There would be this process of [director] Jon Favreau and Robert and I going into Jon’s trailer in the morning and Robert being like, ‘I’m not fucking saying these lines’ and throwing them out,” she said. “And then live improv-ing either in the trailer or on the set. I think in order for something to feel alive for Robert, it has to feel fresh, and he makes it fresh by making it feel like it was just invented. So many of those famous lines were written 10 minutes before we said them.”
Downey has a few upcoming projects in the meantime. He’s attached to return as Sherlock Holmes for Sherlock Holmes 3 with director Dexter Fletcher, though the film has yet to materialize. More immediately, he is in The Sympathizer, HBO’s Vietnam War limited series based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that’s coming April 14.
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