Steve Pratt discusses the creation of a superhero with Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow and the men behind the cameras

IRON Man is the latest in a long line of comic book superheroes to reach the screen but he's different to the rest. For one thing, he doesn't possess superpowers. The iron suit makes the man.

Hes just an ordinary guy C if you can call a billionaire arms dealer like Tony Stark an ordinary guy C with a large magnet in his chest to stop scrapnel from a bomb piercing his heart and an impenetrable iron suit he designed and built himself.

What also makes him different is that his creators, Marvel, have put their money where their comic is and financed his big screen transfer. In the past theyve let other studios put their heroes on film.

Producer Avi Arad points out that theyve done superpowers with the likes of Spider-Man and X-Men but Iron Man, being an arms dealer, makes contact with the modern world and issues of today.

So Iron Man is the first film under the company's new Marvel Studios banner.

The man they put in the director's chair, Jon Favreau, wasnt an obvious choice. The star and writer of Swingers has branched out into directing with childrens sci-fi story Zathura but he reckons it was Elf that earned him the job on Iron Man.

"It was viewed as a good movie, made for very little money but which made a lot of money. I also played a supporting character in the superhero film Daredevil, he says. "I knew about this character because hes been around for 40 years. I thought the film was an interesting challenge."

Leading lady Gwyneth Paltrow, making a comeback after time off to devote herself to motherhood, knew nothing of Iron Man. She's surprised to learn that the production notes for the film state that she grew up with comic books.

"Really?," she says, puzzled. "My brother had a few comics lying around but I had more of a fairy tale and Charlotte Bronte youth. When they approached me with this idea, I'd never heard of Iron Man. It was a real education."

WHEN it came to finding someone to play playboy-turned-superhero Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr reckons he wasn't on anyone's list for the part. He's been rebuilding his career after muchpublicised clashes with the law over a drug habit. "Tony Stark offered me a chance in a lifetime and one of these things was talking with Jon and the process before I was cast," he explains.

"It's rare in movies like these.

Favreau says the first thing you get is a release date, then a poster, then you talk about the trailer and you think about a director and casting, and maybe, at some point, a script.

"What was really great about this C and there was some hesitancy for reasons I'm sure are obvious enough in having all this dough and this big idea in putting me out in front of it C but the cool thing is that Jon and I got to have a series of conversations when we thought it could be a great idea.

"There was a point when Jon said 'look, I dont think this is going to work out'. And I said 'well, I'll just have to pretend I didn't hear that'.

And it came down to a screen test."

What he's trying to say, he continues (while rather tying himself in knots by this point) is that everyone, especially Jon and him, were keen in creating this character to keep true to its original form.

"And at some point there's going to be obvious questions of art imitating life and all that. For me, I just call it a $165m catharsis.

"This is my soundbite C I came to the set at the start of the day, Id ball up the script and throw it against the wall. Jon would say 'good morning'.

And I would say 'what do you want to do?'. Or Gwyneth would say 'oh my God you guys, we HAVE to shoot something before lunch today, youre crazy'."

Downey Jr says about the effort of creating a big box office movie: "We tried to make the scenes the way we wanted to see them because I'm used to being pretty disappointed and embittered when I actually pay to go see these movies that promise I'll be entertained."

His Tony Stark is a bit of a genius in the technical department, not a skill shared with the man who portrays him. "I was actually trying to get online in my suite upstairs and almost lost my mind. But I have a great love for it," he says.

One big challenge for Downey Jr was wearing the Iron Man suit. The digital build and design was 95 per cent complete before the actor was even cast in the role. "We actually built the structures in the computer so that theyre mathematically perfect,2 says Shane Mahan from Stan Winston Studios, which made the suit.

"Then we made the pieces and fitted them around him and made them work and actually move.

I was very happy with the results because the suits are quite athletic."

PRODUCER Kevin Feige says that seeing Downey Jr in the suit for the first time was like watching a kid in a candy store. "He looked amazing and had all the enthusiasm of a little boy.

Then, he suddenly stood up and you could see the hero forming within him," he says.

Downey needed to get in shape to wear the suit. "I trained a lot because if youre 22 or 32 you train for six weeks and you look good for six months. I trained for six months and looked good for about six seconds," he says.

The process of putting the full suit on would take three people 30 to 40 minutes. Downey Jr describes that the first half-hour of putting in the Iron Man suit is like being in the coolest Hallowe'en costume ever.

ö Iron Man (12A) opens in cinemas tomorrow.

10:47am Thursday 1st May 2008

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