With the MCU after the
box office failures of films like and , a lot of former Marvel stars have been choosing their words pretty carefully when asked the inevitable “would you ever return” interview question. Last week, said she thought it “would be a huge loss for Marvel if they didn’t find a way to bring back the ,” but that her time as Gamora was “gone for good.” Last summer, star said he straight up “didn’t really care for” his multiple franchise roles, even though he’ll be returning (in a way) to play Kraven the Hunter in Sony’s spinoff later this year. Robert Downey Jr. took a slightly different tack. “Happily,” he said, when asked whether he’d ever consider stepping into Iron Man’s shiny red boots one more time. “It’s too integral a part of my DNA,” he continued. “That role chose me. And look, I always say, Never, ever bet against (Marvel Studios CEO) Kevin Feige. It is a losing bet. He’s the house. He will always win.” Here’s the thing: have you ever said you would have to attend a friend of a friend of a friend’s birthday party an hour from you after you’d already RSVPd no? That’s essentially what Downey is doing here. Speaking years after Tony Stark’s death at the end of , Feige promised , “We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again... We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.” Added director Joe Russo, “We promised [Downey] it would be the last time we made him do it—ever.” On the other hand, Downey may have just been feeling nostalgic for his days of uninterrupted riffing after working on , which he described to as “like picking fly shit out of pepper... liberating by its varied implicit limitations of what my usual toolbox is.” That’s a stark contrast to what he used to do on his Marvel sets. In the same profile, revealed that she stopped trying to learn her lines altogether while working alongside the
Actor. “There would be this process of [director] Jon Favreau and Robert and I going into Jon’s
trailer in the morning and Robert being like, ‘I’m not fucking saying these lines’ and throwing them out,” she said. “I think in order for something to feel alive for Robert, it has to feel fresh, and he makes it fresh by making it feel like it was just invented. So many of those famous lines were written ten minutes before we said them.” Downey’s next project is Vietnam War thriller , which he executive produced with director Park Chan-wook. The miniseries premieres April 12 on
HBO.