Ever since the release of 2008’s Iron Man, Roberty Downey Jr. has become synonymous with Tony Stark and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Downey Jr. would reprise his role as Tony Stark in nine other Marvel films, culminating in his character’s sacrificial death in Avengers: Endgame. Along the way, Iron Man was responsible for bringing a new wave of heroes into the MCU, and became one of the common threads that held everything together.
Source: polygon.com
Ahead of his appearance in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, Downey Jr. sat down with the New York Times to reflect on his career and a life post-Marvel.
His Two Most Important Roles
While Downey Jr. will always be Iron Man, the actor stated that his two most important roles were outside of the MCU. According to Downey, it was 2006’s The Shaggy Dog and 2020’s Dolittle that were his most important titles.
Photo: IMDB
“I finished the Marvel contract and then hastily went into what had all the promise of being another big, fun, well-executed potential franchise in ‘Dolittle,’” Downey Jr. said. “I had some reservations. Me and my team seemed a little too excited about the deal and not quite excited enough about the merits of the execution. But at that point I was bulletproof. I was the guru of all genre movies. Honestly, the two most important films I’ve done in the last 25 years are ‘The Shaggy Dog,’ because that was the film that got Disney saying they would insure me. Then the second most important film was ‘Dolittle,’ because ‘Dolittle’ was a two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered opportunity.”
While Downey Jr.’s statement about The Shaggy Dog makes sense, as it was the film that brought the actor back into the Hollywood fold after a 1996 arrest for possession of heroin, cocaine, and an unloaded gun, Doolittle is a more surprising choice.
A Box Office Bomb
The tentpole film with a $175 million budget bombed at the box office in January 2020 and earned Downey Jr. some of his worst reviews. The film was produced by Downey and his wife, Susam, under their Team Downey Productions banner.
Photo: Variety
“The stress it put on my missus as she rolled her sleeves up to her armpits to make it even serviceable enough to bring to market was shocking,” Downey Jr. recalled of the flop. “After that point — what’s that phrase? Never let a good crisis go to waste? — we had this reset of priorities and made some changes in who our closest business advisers were.”
Simply “Content”
Going through his filmography Downey frequently refers to some of his more commercial roles as simply “content”. Even a personal project such as the documentary Sr., which the actor described as”the most important thing that I ever commit to a data card on a camera”, is saddled with that label.
Photo: Disney
Perhaps as surprising, is Downey Jr.’s verdict on Avengers: Age of Ultron.
“Content,” he says.
Could Downey Jr. Return to the MCU?
While Age of Ultron was clearly not the high water mark for Downey’s involvement in the MCU, it is still somewhat surprising to hear the actor speak disparagingly of the film. In the past, Downey Jr. has always been quick to defend both Marvel’s products and his fellow actors.
With Avengers: Secret Wars around the corner, rumors have continued to swirl that Downey Jr. could return to the MCU. Based on his interview this week, however, it doesn’t sound like a return to Marvel is in his future.
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