At the recent Los Angeles Times’ Hero Complex Film Festival, Jon Favreau and Robert Downey, Jr. sat down to talk about The Avengers.
The Times ran an interview with Favreau at their convention last weekend, asking him about motivations and behind the scenes shtick for Iron Man and The Avengers:
The neat thing here is where he talks about the origin of the Avengers film.
Apparently, the addition of Captain America’s shield in the closing sequence of the first Iron Man film was a sort of inside joke from one of the set artists.
Combined with the last-second decision to include a Samuel L. Jackson cameo, it managed to convince people there was a larger project in the works.
In the end, the studio decided this would be a great idea.
From such humble beginnings came the epic Avengers set-up, which has gone through Iron Man 2, Thor, and the upcoming Captain America: The First Avenger. This is all building up to next summer’s big all-star blockbuster The Avengers, which is slated to star all of the actors from the latest gamut of Marvel films as their characters team up to fight a greater evil. The film will be directed by Joss Whedon.
After a few minutes of discussion with Favreau, the director got his phone out and dialed Robert Downey Jr., the star of both Iron Man films, and the actor who will portray the Iron Man character in The Avengers.
This clip doesn’t give us much new information, but it does give some of Downey’s personality, and a glimpse into the close freindship that these two seem to have developed over the course of two films.
