During our few days in California at the DisneyOzEvent, we were given an exclusive peek at Iron Man 3 and the opportunity to speak with Kevin Feige, the President of Production at Marvel Studios.
Talk about an honor!
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Mr. Feige gives us a little background and explanation of the scenes we were seeing and answers some of our questions.
I’m going to start off by showing you something that is going to be unveiled on the world, in a matter of weeks…. This time we wanted to return to Tony’s world. His place in Malibu, and we wanted to remind the audience, yes the suits are cool, but it’s his intellect that is really his super power.
He’s been to outer space, he’s seen aliens, he’s seen green people, he’s seen guys with hammers, and he’s just a guy. So it sometimes worries him and he thinks maybe I can- maybe I’m only super if I’m in the suit. This movie is the movie that reminds him he’s super, even out of his suit.
Happy Hogan is again played by Jon Favreau, who is one of Tony Stark’s best friends. Is hurt, seemingly an attack by the new villain as Mandarin, a terrorist in this world. And he’s going to investigate who this terrorist is and where he can find him. And it leads him to a place Tony’s never been in any of the movies, which is the middle of the good old US of A. He’s in small town, Rose Hill, Tennessee. And he meets a boy.
Here he is in the middle of Tennessee with his hat pulled low and he’s trying to do this investigation. And this very sweet and funny relationship that he begins with this little boy. The little kid is named Tyson, we had this idea to team him up with a little kid for a section of the movie. And it was a little bit scary. So we auditioned lots and lots of kids and Tyson came in and was just a real kid. He could barely keep a straight face looking at Robert. He bonded with Robert completely and we decided, you know what, this is the one to cast. I called Robert, I said, I think he’s the best kid, I’m going to cast him. He said, let me call him. So I called his mom, and I said what time does he get out of school and what’s his cell phone? And when he came out of school, his cell phone rang and it was Robert Downey, Jr. calling saying, you’re going to be in Iron Man 3. And so it continued like that for the rest of the production. It was really great and they formed a nice bond.
And it is a fun bond. Tony does not treat him like a kid necessarily. He goes on in this scene and he doesn’t pat him on the head and treat him like a little boy necessarily. Which I think little boys like when adults don’t treat them like that. So we’ve screened it for a few audiences just in a normal test screening, and this relationship is ranked as one of the most surprising, and unique, and new things about the movie. Which was exciting because it was one of the scary things.
Q: When he’s working with the little boy, do you see a lot of smart-aleckness of Tony Stark in him, with the little boy, or did you soften it up and you miss some of that?
Kevin Feige: Uh, no. He is quite the smart-aleck with- with the little boy, oh yes. Um, and he’s sort of- the boy is shocked at first, and then slowly begins to sort of give as good as he gets from Tony.
But we really wanted him to be fighting for his friends, for the love of his life, Pepper.
Q : As a mother of two teenagers, I appreciate you’re having a positive role model, as far as modeling relationships. Is that something you intended from the beginning?
Kevin Feige: Pepper, was always the most important relationship to Tony Stark in the comics. A lot of the other characters don’t have that. The Marvel characters sort of do. In in the beginning of Iron Man 1 he goes to Vegas, he sleeps with a reporter, to sort of set up that relationship with Pepper. There’s a flashback at the beginning of this movie with the Rebecca Hall character that shows what he was like many years ago, before he became Iron Man. And you see a little bit of that playboy. But the fact is, you always want to remind audiences of that side of him, so you can appreciate how, sort of mature he’s getting. That he’s putting all that aside to be with her. The other thing is, the chemistry between Robert and Gwyneth is spectacular!
Q: Women and action movies are not necessarily words that are synonymous, but Marvel has really done a good job of getting women interested. Avengers was something women were really drawn to. How much though do you put into bringing the female audience in?
Kevin Feige: Well, want these movies to play for everyone. We think they are for everyone. And I don’t know that we necessarily sit down and go, how do we make men like this movie? How do we make women like this movie? We don’t do that. Part of what we love about our characters is they’re human, they’re flawed. They react even with aliens coming at them and armored suits flying at them and villains shooting rays at them. The way they respond to those situations, we try to make it as emotionally truthful as possible.
The advanced technology of Iron Man. Let that be the comic book element. But the human interaction should be real. It should be as real as possible. I think that appeals to people who might not just love the explosions and the loud noises and the clacking and the repulsing.
And he’s been with the same woman the whole time, and the relationship just grows. And the relationship gets deeper and deeper. And in this film they live together. The truth of the matter is, the love triangle in this movie is really between Tony, Pepper and the suits. Tony, Pepper and his obsession with those suits, and the obsession with technology. It’s sort of unique for a big superhero Summer blockbuster franchise to have. Yes he has to save the world, but it’s really about, about the relationship between those two.
Q: Can you talk about Marvel working with Disney?
Kevin Feige: Well, I’ll tell you a few things. One is, I’m obsessed with Disney and with Disney theme parks, and when I was first asked by the heads of Marvel,what do you think of Disney? We’re thinking of selling the company. I was like…I pulled out my wallet, I got the annual pass, the Disney DVC membership, all of that stuff, because I was just obsessed with it. That’s what my family did, was go to the Disney theme parks every year. And still do, over New Years down in Florida.
They said we like what you’re doing. We want you to keep doing what you’re doing. And that has certainly held true. They’ve let us make the movies we want to make the way we make them.
The best thing, and Avengers is the perfect example of it. Groups like yourselves. All of the marketing that they bring to it. The passion that they bring to it, and tapping into everything that a company as huge as Disney can do. But at the same time, what I love most about them is, despite it being the biggest entertainment conglomerate on earth, I think it is, it’s Disney.
Q: Avengers was marketed towards families, this one seems a little more intense. How do you perceive the marketing?
Kevin Feige: Well, all of our movies are PG-13. I know parents who take their four year olds, and I know parents who won’t let their kids see them until they’re thirteen. For us, there are things you can do if you are going by the letter of the law in a PG-13 movie. There’s a level of violence you can add, there’s a level of sexuality you can have, there’s a level of language you can have. We never go anywhere near that, top of that. Because we don’t want to. Because that’s not what our characters are about.
When you have the amount of fighting and explosions and some blood on his nose when he puts the suit on, we want it to be real. Otherwise it’s just a CG thing hitting a CG person. So that’s why we’re always in that PG-13 range. But we also want to be able to take our kids to these movies, and enjoy them. It’s really the level of intensity that determines whether parents are comfortable taking their kids to it as opposed to content.
There’s a legacy with Marvel, and there’s a history with Marvel. And you have grandparents and parents and kids and little kids that know them. I love that it can stay cool and relevant from a two year old to a twelve year old to a twenty-two year old to a ninety-two year old. That’s important to us.
Q: Any chance of Pepper taking on more time in the suit and become a character herself?
Kevin Feige: I will tell you this. In this movie we play with the convention of the damsel in distress. We don’t necessarily- we are bored by the damsel in distress. But sometimes you want the hero to be desperate enough in fighting for something other than just his own life. So, there is fun to be had with, is Pepper in danger or is Pepper the savior?
In terms of where we go with future movies, we’ll see. In the comic books she does get a taste for the suit and becomes her own hero named Rescue, who doesn’t necessarily battle other people, but is on missions to help people and to save people. Will we do that down the line with Gwyneth Paltrow? Who knows. It’s certainly something…her being in the suit is something we have been playing with since Iron Man 2.
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EXCLUSIVE IRON MAN 3 TRAILER
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Iron Man 3 will arrive in theaters on May 3, 2013
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Disclosure: I was provided with the above information by Disney. This is accordance with Federal Trade Commissions 16 CFR, Part 255 Guides Concerning the Use of. Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Dianna Ranere