Imagine my surprise to wake up this morning, get the kids off to school, fix the morning cosmo, and WHAM! I'm hit with the news from the Hollywood Reporter that Robert Downey Jr. has signed on to play Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man in Jon Favreau's highly anticipated Iron Man feature film!!
I can't deal with this so early in the morning... I should have stayed up late last night.
We also get some tidbits about the plot, which although set in today's geopolitical world view, will still contain the basic gist of the Iron Man origin. Downey will portray Stark as a billionaire industrialist and genius inventor who is kidnapped and forced to build a devastating weapon. Using his intelligence and ingenuity, Stark instead builds a high-tech suit of armor and escapes captivity. Upon his return to the U.S., he uncovers a plot with global implications and must don his armor and protect the world.
Apparently Downey worked hard to get in shape for the role, and even growing the famous Stark-goatee (or is it a Van Dyke? I get them confused...) Kevin Feige, Marvel's president of production said that he is confident that Downey is THE perfect person to play the role, adding that "the Marvel characters are not just about how high they jump or how fast they fly, they're about their character flaws... They're about their inner demons. They're about the struggles that they go through between being a man and being a hero."
Downey of course is famous not just for his acting career but for battling his own addiction demons, culminating in breaking into someone else's house and sleeping in their bed, and ultimately, jail time. Tony Stark, as any fan knows, has also battled alcoholism throughout some very prominent character arcs. While the producers and Favreau have been relatively coy about whether or not we'll see the alcoholic tendencies in the initial film, the casting of Downey certainly lends creedence to the idea that they may choose to go down that path, even subtley... perhaps paving the way for that character flaw in the (hopefully inevitable) sequels?
