Director Shane Black Discusses the Realism and Action of Iron Man 3
Posted 11.02.11 by Ryan
Comic book fans will be treated to plenty of Iron Man in the next few years, with 2012's The Avengers followed by 2013's Iron Man 3. While The Avengers is about a team of super-powered individuals taking down a god-like foe, the third Iron Man will reportedly see the character take on "real world villains" in a "Tom Clancy-inspired thriller."
While Jon Favreau directed the first two Iron Man movies, the third installment will be directed by writer-director Shane Black, who helmed 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr.. Appearing at the Long Beach Comic-Con, Black spoke about the realistic approach to Iron Man 3.
I think the approach is not just a visual or cinema-graphic approach. There's always been the tendency to make Iron Man the real-world superhero who deals with things a bit more rooted in geopolitical reality and then have comic book elements added. What's interesting to me about the first movie, and to some extent the second movie, is the character. If you're really paying attention to the story, the more people care about the character, the more people will care about the outcome, I think.
Black also spoke more in depth about the notion that Iron Man 3 will be a Clancy-esque thriller, revealing that he hopes the sequel will be a "return to the type of action movie I remember so fondly."
I think it would be a return to the type of action movie I remember so fondly, which is less random carnage and more thriller — less action, more suspense. More character-driven urgency that makes you want to find out what happens to the guy, not what happens to the building behind the guy. There's a certain retro vibe that I love which is the idea of taking modern technology and shot-making and even color palettes and injecting them with this sense of thriller-esque, 1970s stuff that makes it seem more edgy and accessible as opposed to just loud and obnoxious. That's kind of where I'm heading.
While Black wouldn't exactly reveal who those villains are, one enemy that won't plague Tony Stark in the sequel will be alcohol. The infamous "Demon in a Bottle" story arc published in the Marvel comic book in 1979 that showed Tony Stark's alcohol dependency issues, was possibly set to show up in Iron Man 2, but became an element only briefly touched on in the movie. Black also says that he plans to stay away from the storyline as well.
No, because if we go there — it's part of Tony's character, but I think the "Demon In A Bottle" aspect, if you go there, you really have to go there. The film then becomes about that, because the journey that involves recovering from alcoholism is an entire movie. I mean, I want to keep it dark and interesting and edgy and spicy and all those things, but I don't think we want to go as far as to deal with Tony's descent into alcoholic madness. That's maybe not where we want to be.
Besides directing, Black is writing the script with British screenwriter Drew Pearce, who wrote Marvel's as-yet-unproduced The Runaways. Black says that working with Pearce and Downey Jr. on the Iron Man 3 script has been an easy process.
It's a real synergistic group, between Drew and Robert and Marvel and me. Knock on wood, but so far we seem to really be complimenting each other. [Drew] and I go off and write and bring the pages to Downey, and it's just a great collaboration. I've never had a better writing experience that on the one hand was sort of fraught with terror at first, but then became so much fun. This guy, Drew, just makes me smile. He makes a process that can be so difficult and unbearable just that much easier.
Iron Man 3 is scheduled for release on May 3, 2013. Don Cheadle, who played Lt. James "Rhodey" Rhodes in Iron Man 2, revealed in June that production will likely start in February, which would make sense given the release date. However, no production start has been publicly announced so far.