Moviefone Copyright 2011, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. Moviefone Good old fashioned elbow grease.
A legendary Hollywood screenwriter who basically invented the modern buddy-cop-action-psychodrama with the original “Lethal Weapon” back in 1987, Black’s unique style -- frequently characterized by an at once serious and funny blend of wry voice-overs, film noir detectives, odd couples, hopeless despair, Christmas, the destruction of houses on stilts, and outrageous violence -- shines through the filter of every director he’s worked with, and is much-beloved by his fans.

Among those admirers is Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, who recruited Black to succeed Jon Favreau as the man behind the man in the iron mask, so to speak, even though Black had only one other directorial credit to his name. That film is the acclaimed “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” which happened to star Tony Stark himself, Robert Downey Jr., in a career-re-defining performance that helped land him the “Iron Man” part in the first place.

Obviously, it was natural progression for the talented Black to helm the new Iron Man film, but we were nevertheless struck by how Shane Black-ish the new film really is, despite hitting all the notes we’ve come to expect from Marvel Studios films. The synthesizing of styles and confounding of expectations were part of our recent conversation with Black and Feige, who explained, candidly, the Marvel method of moviemaking as well as the symbolic content of “Iron Man 3,” strong women characters, and why it can be a good thing for an audience to leave a movie with questions about what they’ve just seen.

[WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD]

Moviefone: First question, Christmas and a house on stilts; were these the deal-breakers?

Shane Black: [laughs] We didn’t really project that [Tony Stark’s doomed house] would be that far out over the peninsula. It just sort of evolved. The fascinating thing to me about the house is that it’s just not real at all. On day one I said, “Please do me a favor. I know you guys know how to do this. I’m not going to presume. But please, let’s do models. Please, let’s just build the house, we’ll make it the size of two rooms, I don’t care if the water looks a little fake, I just love models.” And they said, “You know, [“The Avengers” director] Joss [Whedon] said the same thing and quickly changed his mind.” And sure enough, they made it look real. I always thought CGI couldn’t look real but you can do anything now.

All the Marvel Studios films have a prevailing aesthetic, but you also work with really idiosyncratic filmmakers, too. And the films work. But this film might be the most seamless. It’s definitely a Marvel Studios film. It’s definitely a Shane Black film. What’s the process behind it?

Kevin Feige: It’s very difficult...

SB: [laughs]

KF: Well, it’s a legitimate desire to bring a unique voice to each movie and have each movie stand on its own and be a great piece of entertainment in and of itself. Then it must connect to the broader Marvel Universe in various ways. Frankly, when Shane was signing up for “Iron Man 3,” we knew he knew what Iron Man is, he knew what the audience’s expectations were for an Iron Man movie. As he’s done many times before, he figured out a great way to turn that on its head while keeping it very much in line.

SB: There’s a humility, too, that’s required -- a lesson I am forced to learn again and again as I go through life. It’s knowing that there are accommodations, there’s a Marvel Universe that I now get a pass to play inside of. It doesn’t mean I can’t say, “Okay, everyone dies!” But who wants everyone to die? I had fun collaborating and constructing with Marvel, and to some extent even with Downey, the story that we hope will satisfy everybody. There’s a lot of wrangling to be done because there’s a lot of opinions in the room, but that’s the fun of it.

We skip the middleman. Normally I’d go off and do my bad thinking in private and write down ideas and go, “Argh, that doesn’t work!” or I’d spit [an idea] out and my friend would go, “Wow you really put your foot in it with that one!” and I’d finally go, “All right, here are my great ideas, finally!” and hand them over to Marvel. Except Marvel doesn’t work that way. They want you to be in the room, so my bad laundry is being viewed by everybody as we work in the room together. Once I got over that, I said, “You know what? Fine. I’ll say a dumb idea, I don’t care. We’ll get this together. We’ll skip the middleman. We’ll write this damn thing in this room.” And we did that. We had this marvelous collaborative experience with [executive producers] Lou D’Esposito, Stephen Broussard, [co-screenwriter] Drew Pearce, and Kevin and myself in a room, vetting ideas and breaking story for hours at a time.

Ultimately, it’s this great fusion that wouldn’t exist otherwise. I’ve never been able to do that before. Most producers I work with can’t stand 30 minutes of sitting in a room talking about story. These guys can do it days on end.

An interesting theme in the film is anonymity. Anonymity gives Killian (Guy Pearce) his power. Tony Stark identifying himself explicitly is what ends up getting him blown up. Was there any aspect of Internet culture involved in that, the notion that anonymity can empower people?

SB: Yes. There was the notion of having created something beyond yourself and then stepping back and watching it play out. It’s no mistake that the Mandarin videos which go viral are kind of chaotic and “video”-looking. He is a mythic figure who basically exists in the ether now. He’s been created. He’s the ultimate terrorist. The anonymous voices who benefit from him don’t have to interact with that. They’ve created something bigger than themselves. So, too, has Tony with his Iron Man suits because he has made something he can never live up to. This thing that is literally a hollow individual which walks beside him. It’s now something he’s projected outside himself, and he is the anonymous creator of these things.

There’s a lot of those symbolic things running through the film. By the end, [Tony] has to recall [the suits] in a way, and reclaim his flesh, his being. He says, “Yeah, it was great for a while to be anonymous but now I have to step up and own myself again and get rid of all these distractions.”

It was great to see Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper step up and have that moment where she wasn’t the damsel in distress, she was the one saving Tony. Was that important to you?

SB: It was important, especially to take the curse off the damsel in distress thing. I have a hankering for empowered females trashing stuff. Especially when that stuff includes this metal suit that’s been impinging on their relationship. Literally showing up in their bedroom at night and driving her to distraction. It’s in essence Tony’s lover. It’s become the other woman. This f---ing Iron Man. So she, at the end, has a chance to exact some vengeance on it and reclaim her boyfriend.

We were speaking with Rebecca Hall (Maya Hansen) earlier, and the scene she mentioned was when she and Pepper were interacting. That they’d both been with Tony Stark was incidental. They were all business, as opposed to having a clichéd cat fight.

KF: Yes.

And The Mandarin as well, without spoiling anything, there’s obviously a flipping of the script. It seems like you guys take that opportunity when it presents itself.

SB: You can’t do too much of that, though, because then that becomes predictable. But to the extent that it feels like it’s organic, the attempt to be surprising and have moments that you can go in and interpret different ways -- maybe this means this, maybe this means that -- for example, you came in here with questions about the film. That’s great. Those questions are great. Observations about the film, that’s a victory already. I wouldn’t try to turn things on their head just to do so, but to keep things surprising and keep possibilities in play, to keep notions in play and see how those notions bounce for each other, that’s all you can ask for -- especially in a superhero movie where you’re not expected to deliver anything of significant intellectual weight, why not give it a shot?

KF: They’re both such strong characters in and of themselves, Maya Hansen and Pepper Potts. They each have so much more going on in their lives than the fact that one slept with Tony once and one’s sleeping with him now. We love the idea that that’s just completely incidental. They don’t get catty about it. Maya couldn’t give a sh--, and Pepper knows what Tony was up to all those years.

SB: Maya wasn’t even that taken with him, really!

KF: Tony said it was a great night and she was like, “Eh...”

SB: It’s also part of the rom-com of it. What’s important to me in honoring Favreau and what he’s contributed with the first movies, which I went back and watched again and again, is they’re part-thriller, and there’s also a lot of romantic comedy. The extent to which rom-com figures in the early Iron Man movies is substantial. The relationship stuff -- what some people might unkindly call the soap opera stuff -- is just as important in some ways as the technology and that was amazing to me. Make them care about the people, make it funny, and then have the mythic stuff that’s sort dark and powerful and portentous and then take the curse off that, take the piss out of the myth if you can. It’s just juggling.

KF: The best of the Marvel comics have been doing that for a long time.

SB: Decades.

"Iron Man 3" is in theaters nationwide.]]> Fri, 3 May 2013 10:29:41 EDT 3208731 “Iron Man 3,” the much anticipated sequel to not just “Iron Man 2” but also “The Avengers.”

The high-tech and introspective film from Shane Black and Marvel Studios casts Pearce as Aldrich Killian, an endlessly ambitious and wealthy man whose numerous, insurmountable disadvantages -- both physical and, well, socially -- cause him to run afoul of seemingly everyone he meets. Most notable among them is Tony Stark, whose brutal snubbing at the start of the film forms a crucial link in a devastating chain called Extremis.

Killian’s complex journey was the subject of our candid interview with Pearce, who also addressed what he described as a sometimes hazardous relationship an actor can have with an adaptation’s source material, like “Iron Man” comic books. Pearce also discussed with us the film’s references to the theme of anonymous power in a world of technology, and why he thinks that notion could be bogus, and reveals an element of his character’s prowess that was left on the cutting room floor.

WARNING: Mild spoilers

Moviefone: “Iron Man 3” is inspired by the Warren Ellis-scripted, Adi Granov-illustrated “Extremis” comic book. Did you read that to get a background on your character, Aldrich Killian?
In the early stages of arriving [on location] in North Carolina and starting the film, I started asking questions about when [the comic] was out and [Marvel] sent me a bunch of stuff. So I read it and said, “Okay, you’ve taken from this and from that,” and then I put them down. Because ultimately I find that unless the source material is really helpful, it actually becomes more of a hinderance, to be honest. You start to realize you’ve got to sort of go through all the processes and all the steps that the writers have done to compile the character you’re actually playing in the movie.

You mean, at that stage you’re doing the adaptation yourself?
Absolutely. So I find if i don’t have a problem with the script, if everything is making sense and working for me, I’d almost rather not go back into that world [of source material]. I know it’s a tricky run at this because the comics are sacrosanct. And it’s not even so much about the changing of [the material], it’s actually more about sitting down with people who are comic fans and them going, “What do you think about this?” and you just don’t want to be the guy that goes, “I don’t know because I haven’t read it.” But the truth is, I don’t know because I haven’t read it [laughs].

Your character goes through a big change in this film. Someone described it as him having an Act I and an Act III, but we don’t see what happens to him in the intervening years, between when he was introduced as hopeless and returned in a position of power. What’s your take on who Killian is when he starts out and how he gets to where he is later in the film?
The word “difficulty” was a prominent word when I was thinking about the earlier Killian. He’s having difficulty physically, he’s difficult for other people because he’s irritating. His eagerness and his ambition and his social awkwardness are a little out of control. It was important to try and get my head around someone of that ilk, who was sympathetic but also annoying such that Tony was able to say, “Keep away, buddy, you’re really too much for us” without Tony being a total a**hole. Tony’s got his stuff going on [with Maya Hansen] and I’ve just jumped into a lift to get an invite to a party that I’m not invited to.

Do you see Killian as a victim of bullying?
Totally, he is.

Bullying by Tony Stark?
No, not just by Tony Stark. We don’t see the thousand other times that Killian probably annoyed somebody and got told to piss off as well. I just think that’s relevant to see it happen by Tony Stark. I would hope that people don’t think that’s the only time he’s been bullied and that’s the only thing that propels him forward.

Speaking of that moment, there’s a line there that I was hoping you could expand on because it was very intriguing. The notion of Killian finding “power in anonymity.”
It’s a really strange one. He sees himself as anonymous because people like Tony don’t see him, or do but they go, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” So he talks about the power of utilizing that and taking advantage of that and working from behind the scenes. Which as you know after having seen the film is sort of a clever stroke.

Ironically, though, with the advent of Extremis and him proving his physicality and social graces and charm and so forth, he becomes somebody that people might notice more than they had before. Strangely he’s not as anonymous now as he was then. And because of the creation of this ego... you know when someone commits a crime -- apparently this happens, I don’t know [laughs] -- they sort of hover around the crime scene because they want to see the reaction to it? I think, subconsciously a part of them wants to be caught. I think when people do negative things they kind of what it to end, they want to be caught and they want to be found out. I think Killian probably wants the limelight. It’s complicated. I think it’s an odd, messy sort of ground. It’s a tricky thing because the story’s not about Killian, you don’t see all the moments offscreen, obviously.

Killian is framed as a tech guy, and the concept of anonymity is interesting in that context. If you look online you see a lot of people who find anonymity as a place where they find power. That’s a way they can express themselves, band together and fight back against people.
It’s kind of weird, though. It’s a little like when people say Facebook and tweeting is all about communication. I actually think it’s narcissistic, I don’t think it’s about communication at all. I actually think the internet, as much as people talk about being anonymous, there you are elevating your ego and you are being seen in a way that’s a little bit like an actor. You go, “Oh, it’s not me, it’s the characters that I play.” But there’s a connection that you make with people. It’s a strange psychological question, whether you’re anonymous or just using that as an excuse.

When Killian presents Pepper Potts with the opportunity to get involved with Extremis, if she’d accepted would Killian had stopped his plans?
No, I don’t think so. I think being in the world of Pepper Potts automatically opens up the world of Tony Stark, so then he’s got to deal with Tony as well. And I’ve always found this a little bit tricky just for my own understanding of whether he goes to see Pepper really just to develop the technology that he’s got going, or ultimately because he’s in love with her and just wants her back. He’s obviously asked her on some dates in the past and knows that now she’s going to take notice. And not just because of how he looks. There’s one reference that we make which I don’t think is actually in the film anymore, that when someone has Extremis pumping through their veins it doesn’t matter what they look like, people naturally find them attractive. People are just drawn to them. So it shouldn’t just be about the fact that he looks really good, but when he kisses her at the end of that scene and he leaves and she goes, “Wow, what just happened then?” That’s not because he has a nice aftershave and a nice suit, that’s the Extremis talking.
]]> Thu, 2 May 2013 11:42:36 EDT 3201595 Don Cheadle as he inspects one of Hasbro’s plastic Iron Patriot masks, modeled after the new and Americanized “armor” he wears as Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes in Marvel’s “Iron Man 3.” At a press conference earlier in the day, Cheadle endured some good natured taunting by his co-star Robert Downey, Jr. about the reportedly enormous and very uncomfortable weight of the Iron Patriot suit (and that of Cheadle’s “Iron Man 2” costume, the War Machine), so we thought he might prefer Hasbro’s lightweight version made for children (of all ages, of course). “It is nice,” concedes Cheadle, who signed some editions that may be given away as prizes as part of Disney and Marvel’s appropriately massive publicity push for the film.

Moviefone spoke with the Academy Award-nominated actor about what the advent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe means for his purposes, as well as his character’s evolution from one hit film to the next, working with his friends Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, and what he hopes Rhodey might have in common with his fan favorite “Boogie Nights” character Buck Swope.

Moviefone: It’s interesting that in this film Rhodes is one of the most highly placed military officers in the country, working directly with the President. What’s your take on Rhodes as a person and how he got to where he is?
Don Cheadle: I think there’s the comic book mythology and then there’s the movie mythology. He was a lieutenant colonel in the last [film], now he’s a colonel. If you want to talk about what happened in the movies, in the second installment he basically steals the [War Machine armor] for the country and goes on to be the kind of public sector superhero. I imagine, since we’ve seen him last, he’s been working for the President, doing special missions that only a person in a metal suit can do. I guess if you play nice with others you get to move up that chain.

Have you read "Iron Man: Extremis" or any of the other comics that specifically informed "Iron Man 3"?
No. I’ve read the Rhodey stuff, but in the comics Rhodey was in the Marines. Iron Patriot was a completely different character. There are two different Marvel realities that [Marvel Studios is] always trying to pay allegiance to. One is the Marvel [comics] reality and one is the movie reality. I trust them to do what they want to do and hand me the script and say, “This is the new Bible.”

Was there a particular Marvel Comics arc for Rhodey that you enjoyed?
I liked ‘fro Rhodey, the sort of radical Rhodey! I know he becomes Iron Man at some point, when Tony goes down. That arc was kind of interesting to me. I don’t know if that’s going to happen [in the films]. The fun for me is seeing how we develop them now and seeing who they become at this point.

From listening to you and your cast mates on stage earlier, what you seem to get out of this experience is working with your friends and having fun, more than just seeing the movie or even the success of the movie.
Well that’s the only thing we can actually control, you know what I mean? How the movie performs or if it’s accepted or not accepted by the audience, that’s outside our purview. Hopefully we create a product that people want to see and are entertained by, but we can’t do anything about that, ultimately. Getting the opportunity to be in a cool relationship with the people you’ve come to know and make these sort of transient families with, that’s nice. It’s fun to get back to doing that with Robert and Gwyneth [Paltrow].

Do you like these sorts of movies?
As a viewer? Yeah. I loved “The Avengers.” There’s a 30-year difference between my daughter and I. We went and both of my kids loved it. It was nice to be able to experience it with the family. I love the big summer tent-pole movies.

Now that you’ve done a couple of these, what do you think is distinct about the “Iron Man” films as opposed to other films you’ve worked on? Not just in terms of the money and the special effects -- I mean, we imagine that working in front of a green screen sucks.
It doesn’t suck, but there’s a lot of trust involved. You don’t know what’s happening around you but you get [a computer generated pre-visualization] and artist renderings and things like that. There’s a certain amount of explanation that happens. But at some point you’re out there reacting to things that aren’t happening. That really is the main difference! The scenes where I’m working with Robert or when we’re dealing with Sir Ben [Kingsley], that’s no different than what happens on “House of Lies” or “The Guard.” You’re just trying to create real moments and have truthful beats happen between each other.

You’re a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is more than just a trilogy -- it’s a much larger story going through other trilogies and other franchises. Does that feel any different for you as an actor?
Not yet! Hopefully there will be a different feeling if Rhodey gets to appear in some of those other ones. So far the Marvel Universe has been just these two films for me.

You work with really distinctive directors, like Steven Soderbergh. Shane Black is another guy who has a really idiosyncratic style. How are they similar or different?
Oh, they’re not similar. They’re very dissimilar. But I think with a movie like this, where it’s such a juggernaut and there’s so much technical considerations that have to be taken into account, I think Shane was very smart in keeping [“Iron Man” and “Iron Man 2” director and “Iron Man 3” executive producer ] Jon Favreau close and pulling his coat and saying, “What’s happening? How can I tackle these big things?” Really, on the day, it didn’t feel that dissimilar to what Jon had to achieve [on the previous film] except the writer is right there. When we were going in and pulling the script apart and rejiggering things, it’s one-stop shopping with Shane.

Would you agree that “Iron Man 3,” even though it is a juggernaut, is still definitely a Shane Black movie?
The aspect of my relationship with Robert -- with Tony and Rhodey’s relationship, rather -- that definitely feels like it’s got the patina of what Shane Black brings to a movie, with that sort of buddy cop, wry, irreverent-in-the-face-of-incredible-danger [style]. And we had to gauge that a lot of times. We have to feel like there’s real danger. It’s fine to be arch and be flip about stuff, but there’s real s*** happening that we have to respond to. Finding that balance is interesting.

It seemed like a lot of that was taking the heroes out of their armored suits. It was cool that we got Rhodey out of the suit and still running around and kicking butt, because he is a military man.
That’s what I’m saying! We get to see it. Robert was saying that. He goes, “I’ve kind of got to be behind you now. I got to follow what you’re telling me to do. When I’m in the suit, I’m the world beater, but right now I gotta go, ‘What are we doing?’” That was kind of fun, seeing how they both needed each other.

What do you want to see Rhodey do next?
Strip.

Strip? Take off the remaining clothes beneath the armor?
Yes, just take off more elements of clothing until it’s "Boogie Nights" Rhodey! No, I don’t know, wherever it goes. We’ll see!]]> Wed, 1 May 2013 11:25:34 EDT 3193616
Hansen's ambitions track fairly closely with the plot of "Iron Man 3," which stars Rebecca Hall as the troubled scientist. We had a chance to speak with Hall about her character's motivations in the new Marvel Studios film, which the actress praises highly for its adult depiction of strong and smart women who're defined by their abilities rather than their romantic relationships with its male hero.

WARNING: Mild spoilers ahead

Moviefone: A lot of "Iron Man 3" is taken from the "Extremis" story by Warren Ellis and Adi Granov. Did you read that or any other comics in preparation for the role of Maya Hanson?
Rebecca Hall: I did. I thought it would be really arrogant of me not to have a look at where she came from and what the root of it all was. Not to mention the fact that I would be at a disadvantage considering billions of people know all about her, and I would just sort of be winging it. So I did [read them] and enjoyed them. But frankly, they have little relevance to the script [for "Iron Man 3"]. So I had to be respectful and pay lip service to doing my background work, but then let it go.

How would you define your character’s role in this story?
Frankly, she’s the driving force of the entire narrative, if I’m going to be honest with you [laughs]. She’s not in a great deal of it, but she happens to have invented some technology that’s going to radically alter the destiny of mankind and is going to entirely drive the narrative and shape the future and present -- and past, for that matter -- of Tony Stark.

Maya seems quite altruistic at the start.
I don’t think she stops being altruistic. She stumbles upon a scientific discovery and she’s not going to walk away from it. She’s on the side of innovation and the advancement of humanity. She’s not getting involved in the ethical dilemma of what it might be should it get into the wrong hands. She’s acting practically. She has to carry on her work. She has to find a way of funding it so she can iron-out the glitches and it can be the best possible outcome, so she sells it. Then she’s effectively working for someone else, and that’s not really her fault that he might have questionable morals.

She comes up with this incredible scientific discovery, but we learn later that Tony had contributed something to it. How much did he really contribute?
Nothing at all. He comes up with maybe an idea that might sort out the glitch, and she thinks that he might have it and so is determined to recruit him, basically, because she wants to get it right because it really goes t*ts-up, to use an English expression. Not that it isn’t going t*ts-up already. That’s the long and the short of it. Whether or not he has actually solved it, who knows?

It seemed like he was getting credit for something he may not have.
No, he’s not. I think that’s something that’s perhaps a little unclear in the film, but no. From where I was standing, she’s come up with [Extremis]. Otherwise, what is she doing in the film?

It seems to me she’s saying to Tony, "What is this thing you wrote down? Can you explain it, just in case?"
Yes, just in case it might be [the answer]. The one thing that both of them can take away from the time they met in Bern is the fact that they had a meeting of minds, whatever else was going on there as well. Odds are that he might be the one person in the whole world who worked out what she can’t.

It seemed like Tony really got to her, though. He said, "My girlfriend has a soul," the implication being Maya doesn’t.
Well, the implication being that she’s sold her soul. But she thinks she’s selling it for the greater good. She thinks she’s in control of it. It’s a very complicated thing.

You and Pepper have a track of the film together that was original because it wasn’t a jealous "We’ve both been with the same man" kind of thing. It was all business.
To be honest with you, it’s one of the main reasons why I took the job. When I initially heard about it, I thought, "Okay they’re bringing another woman in, it’s going to be two females in this, it’s going to probably end up in this horribly reductive, stereotypical cat fight." When I saw that it wasn’t and that it was actually daring to write something that was grown-up and sophisticated, where women are actually bigger than being defined by the people that they’ve slept with, I thought it was kind of great! I applauded it and I applaud Marvel for keeping it in because it would be very easy for them to have gone, “Well, no one’s interested in that sort of stuff in a film like this.” But the truth is, actually, that they are because I have yet to do an interview with someone who hasn’t said exactly that.

Have you heard of the Bechdel Test before?
No, what’s that?

It’s by a cartoonist called Alison Bechdel. The test for a movie is, is there more than one woman in the film? Do they talk to each other about something other than a man? And most movies will fail it.
I’m sure! That’s brilliant! I’ve never heard of that. That is brilliant.

They’re talking to each other about technology. The guy they slept with is almost incidental to the whole thing.
Exactly. They’re smart women. That’s what people want to see now, that’s the stuff that women are complaining about when they say, “Nobody writes good female characters.” Sure, you can get big characters in movies that are women, but nobody’s writing them particularly interestingly or making it real. It’s that sort of stuff. ["Iron Man 3" is] taking a different take, not the obvious one. That’s great.

What’s your favorite bit of the film?
I kind of like the flashback sequence in the beginning, which is one of my bits, but I did enjoy it. It was funny. All the bits with [Jon] Favreau.

Was he meant to look like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction?
He was maybe a little bit modeled, yeah.

That was unexpected, the film opening with that old techno-pop song.
I know! I loved all that. It was such a great throwback And I really enjoyed the fact that we could see a bit of the old Tony Stark again. That stuff is fun, when he’s a playboy and behaving badly. We thought that we weren’t allowed to see any more of that so it was quite exciting to dip back into that stuff again.]]> Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:55:56 EDT 3185061