Director Favreau gave fans input on ‘Iron Man’

By JULIE HINDS

Marvel self-financed the project rather than relying on a studio.

When Jon Favreau explains his role as director of “Iron Man,” the Marvel superhero movie that opens Friday, he relies on his own superpower: candor.

“I’m not operating the camera,” he says. “I’m not performing, really, in it. I’m not building the costumes or the sets and I’m not doing the CGI work. What your job is as a director is to maintain a tone that’s consistent and create a personality for the film. You’re sort of quality control, so you’re watching everything, even though you’re doing nothing.”

For comic book adaptations like “Iron Man,” quality is everything to the core audience. Comic fans don’t just sit around and wait for such films to come out. They follow their progress obsessively and watch for any sign that the source material is being neglected or disrespected.

Instead of hiding from the scrutiny, Favreau embraced it. Early on in the project, he created a MySpace page to communicate with fans. He also courted them at events such as Comic-Con in San Diego and WonderCon in San Francisco, fan gatherings with immense clout in Hollywood.

“I got to stand in front of 5,000, 6,000 people and show footage and hear right from them what they thought, and then read on the Internet what they were saying around their water coolers,” says Favreau during a phone interview where he needs little prompting to sound geeked about his movie.

“Look, it’s an overwhelming time to be a filmmaker in the public eye. But there’s so much available to you if you’re not intimidated by it.”

Favreau’s lack of fear paid off. It’s fair to say the advance buzz on “Iron Man,” which stars Robert Downey Jr., has a rosy molten glow, the kind that usually translates into a huge opening weekend. But more than that, the film seems poised to become the rare comic book movie that generates admiration as well as ticket sales.

Thanks in large part to Favreau’s efforts to include fans in the process, “Iron Man” is being greeted with anticipation, not skepticism. But it’s been a long road. There has been talk since the 1990s of a movie version of the 45-year-old Marvel series about the arrogant playboy who flies around in a cool metal suit. Back then, megastar Tom Cruise was reportedly interested in the role.

Those attempts never came together, and eventually, the rights to “Iron Man” reverted back to Marvel. Instead of relying on outside studios, the company announced plans to self-finance a slate of projects, with “Iron Man” as Marvel’s first effort.

This raises the stakes for Marvel financially and artistically. Before, if changes were made to characters for budget reasons or to court a mainstream audience, it could always be blamed on a boneheaded studio executive.

“Now that it’s Marvel with their own money, I think we owed something to the fans, to at least take into account and consideration what the source material was,” says Favreau, who starred in and wrote “Swingers” and directed “Elf” and the family sci-fi flick “Zathura.”

Iron Man, who debuted in 1963, isn’t an A-list superhero like Batman or Superman. Non-comic fans may know the phrase best as the name of a Black Sabbath song.

In the Iron Man origin story, Tony Stark is a wealthy weapons designer, suave, cocky and anti-communist, who has inherited a major industrial company from his father. On a visit to Vietnam, he’s injured and captured, but he creates a metal suit that saves his life and helps him escape back to America for a life of bad-guy fighting.

Favreau wanted the updated version to address the anxiety of the times, but without a specific political agenda. The movie opens in Afghanistan, where Stark has traveled to show off some new weaponry to U.S. soldiers.

“I really liked the image of here he is in a convoy, listening to AC/DC, sipping a Scotch, joking around without a care in the world and then, bang, he finds himself in a hostage video, which hits such a deep fear,” says Favreau.

Although Favreau had talked at one time about casting a relative unknown, the starring role went to 43-year-old Downey, who can juggle depth and humor as an actor and whose former battles with drug addiction echo the alcoholism that is part of Stark’s darker side in the comic books.

Favreau calls casting Downey the single most important element in the film.

“I got a guy that was bringing a whole body of work and a whole lifetime of experience to the role.”