Robert Downey Jr. Talks IRON MAN 3, a Cool Action Sequence, Rhodey’s Part in the Film, and More

Iron Man 3 is set to kick-off the summer, and Robert Downey Jr. recently sat down for an interview about the film as well as other subjects (Entertainment Weekly is drawing out the interview for the whole week).  While it’s always nice to see Downey do his thing, my anticipation for Iron Man 3 is all about director Shane Black.  Black’s previous film, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, is one of my all-time favorites, and I can’t wait to see what he does with his first blockbuster.  While this will be a summer tent pole, Downey says Black has kept his pulpy style intact. “It’s a hallmark of the Shane Black [scripts] since the beginning of his career,” says Downey, “and it’s been really fun to bring that to Tony Stark’s world.”

Hit the jump for more, including an action scene we should forward to as well as Rhodey’s (Don Cheadle) part in the sequel.  The film also stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Kingsley, Rebecca Hall, Guy Pearce, Jon Favreau, and James Badge Dale.  Iron Man 3 opens in 3D on May 3rd.

Downey revealed a minor spoiler when talking to EW about a memorable action sequence in the film:

We’ve just been talking about one sequence – the top-secret name is the Boot/Glove Sequence, I can tell you that, just between you and me – it’s where Tony only has one gauntlet and one boot and he has to escape multiple captors. It’s really fun, dude. We’re taking everything from his first gauntlet test in the first movie up through the most extreme stuff we thought up for Iron Man 2 and The Avengers and pulling on all of it and making this one big, extended challenge of physics.

It sounds like this sequence ties into the overall theme of the film where Tony is trapped and alone with few resources at his disposal.  We saw in the trailer how his suits were destroyed, and how he was left dragging a single suit through a cold forest.

The actor also talked about how Rhodes factors into the movie in regards to his relationship with Tony:

Rhodey is much more in the dead center of things. He’s much more dynamic. We’ve made this decision that while Tony is a technical guy, he’s not really a trained guy. There’s a lot of fun to be had with Don because he’s really good with hardware and he’s a martial artist, so it’s been really fun exploiting this possibility of Tony having moments like the one in Avengers, like the one with Cap where he decides, “Oh screw it, he probably knows what he’s doing.” So there’s a lot of that and a lot more fun and a lot more depth to Rhodey this time around.

I always wonder, “What if?” when it comes to if Terrence Howard had stuck around as Rhodey, but Cheadle definitely did a great job with the character, and it sounds like he’ll get his fair share of screen time even though the cast has expanded with a bunch of new characters.

Click here for all of our Iron Man 3 coverage.