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 “The birth of a hero is something that is highly enjoyable for audiences to watch,” says producer Feige. “You don't want to delay that too long into the story. The development of a superhero has provided some of the most memorable moments in any of our previous films. `Iron Man' is no exception.”“When you're creating the origin story of a superhero, you have certain critical responsibilities, one of which is showing how the hero came to be,” adds director Favreau. “This can be a burden, but it also gives a filmmaker the opportunity to allow the audience to become the hero alongside the main character. I personally have the most fun as a viewer when I witness the learning curve of the superhero.”
Favreau continues: “When we were developing the script and coming up with ideas for the structure of the story, there was a natural tendency to want to get the character right into action with the suit and to fight but, for me, the more engaged you are in the story, the more interested you will eventually be in those set pieces and the more gratifying those sequences will be to the audience. In writing the script, we made sure to spend time with the character as he is discovering the technology, refining the suit and learning how to use it.”
Another task for the filmmakers was updating the origin story to the present day. In the origin story of the Marvel comic, Tony Stark was an anti-communist hero who was shot down and captured while visiting Vietnam to observe his new mini-transistors that were being used to assist the U.S. war effort.
“The origin story had to be redeveloped to reflect new technology and the changes in the political, social and economic landscapes in the world today,” says Favreau. “What Stan Lee wrote as science-fiction back in the 1960s is currently modern science. We have become so advanced in our technology that things you can buy in a drugstore now would have been the subject matter for a sci-fi film back in the days when Iron Man first entered the Marvel universe. The character of Tony Stark was a larger-than-life character with a conflicted nature who finds his true purpose when he becomes Iron Man. We wanted to keep the basic origin story structure, but tweak it so that it reflected the present day.”
For the writing team of Fergus & Ostby - Academy Award nominees for best adapted screenplay for “Children of Men” - one of the challenges in developing the screenplay was that, although the character of Iron Man had legions of fans in the comic book world, the property had not crossed over into mainstream pop culture, and required a story that would satisfy hardcore genre fans as well as audiences who had never been exposed to the character.
Fergus found his moment of clarity in the writing process courtesy of Favreau and Billingsley. “Early on in one of the writing meetings with Jon and Peter, we sat down and just asked, `If we had to boil this movie down to one sentence what would that be?'” recalls Fergus. “After a few deliberations we came up with 'Iron Man' is a story about a man who finds his heart.' The idea behind a movie should always be something you can really boil down to a singular theme that is easy to understand. When you break down the character of Tony Stark, he really is a man who learns to feel and connect and to accept responsibility for his role in the world.”
“Tony Stark is a good-looking, charming guy who enjoys fast cars, big parties and beautiful women,” says producer Arad. “He is also an extremely brilliant scientist, inventor and weapons manufacturer. He is having way too much fun living his James Bond-like lifestyle to consider that what he does actually has profound global implications.”
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