Robert Downey Jr. Talks The Avengers and Iron Man 2

By Elisabeth Rappe,Cinematical
November 26,2008

Robert Downey Jr. is, quite simply, a god of geekdom. If there's a holy trinity, he shares it only with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman because it is so rare that actors just get it, and even rarer that they'll say it. Witness Downey's thoughts on The Avengers to MTV: "If we don't get it right it's really, really going to suck. It has to be the crowning blow of Marvel's best and brightest because it's the hardest thing to get right. It's tough to spin all the plates for one of these characters."

He also may have let slip who The Avengers might be battling in his concerns that Iron Man remain in a real-world setting: "The danger you run with colliding all these worlds is that Jon was very certain that Iron Man should be set in a very realistic way. Nothing that happened in Iron Man is really outside the realm of possibility. Once you start talking about Valhalla and supersized super soldiers and jolly green giants, it warrants much further discussion." This could mean Giant Man, or Captain America could be looming big in Downey's thoughts.

And Theroux wasn't kidding when he said Downey Jr. was providing notes for Iron Man 2 -- between takes of Sherlock Holmes, he's hashing out exactly where he wants Tony to be: "It's one thing to say you're Iron Man, but what does it actually mean to become someone that can shoulder that responsibility? As we noticed at the end, he's still not even responsible enough to read off the card that Shield and the government have given him. He still can't help doing his own thing. He'll have to come to terms with that. I think we could have more excitement. We could use a love triangle or two ...." And so on -- he's actually kind of exhausting to read, but you should do it, and then give thanks this year for Robert Downey Jr.