Director Jon Favreau has the distinct privilege of saying he was the filmmaker who ushered in the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His 2008 movie Iron Man got everyone hooked on the idea that we were about to embark on the interconnected superhero journey that we had all been waiting for. Favreau returned to direct the 2010 sequel, Iron Man 2, but that turned out to be the final film he would helm for the franchise.
The difference between making the two movies was that the first felt very indie, before the Marvel hype, when the cast said they improvised, took their time, and had a blast. But the second movie was made after Disney bought the rights to Marvel, and the MCU was in full swing, meaning movies had to be made in a certain order and in a particular timeframe as the next interwoven story was contingent on the previous link in the chain.
The production of Iron Man 2 was detailed in the new book “MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios” by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards (via /Film). In the book, Favreau recalled how tired he was when making the demanding second film, and how the exhaustion discouraged him from continuing within the same film series.
Favreau explained at the time:
“A lot of things have to come together for this movie to work out. […] We’re up against it, schedule-wise. We’ve given ourselves less time on this film than we did last time, and it’s a much more ambitious project. This is part of the fear that I had when we started so late; less than two years to do this, to come up with this story. Set it up, prep it, film it, cut it, and do all the finishing touches. It’s no excuse — we’re going to have to do a great film — but it does put everybody under a tremendous amount of stress.”
He noted that he — along with the editors, composers, and everyone else — was going to have to work long, long, long days to get everything done. “It was ambitious to begin with,” he said, “and now we have to knock it into overdrive. There’s going to be a lot of people not sleeping. Hundreds of people not sleeping.”
It’s too bad that these films were pumped out so quickly, and a great director was made to feel like the filmmaking experience was no longer worth it to make a film for this franchise. Iron Man was arguably the best of the Tony Stark standalone stories, and it seems like it was probably because the movie was made with less pressure and time restraints.
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