Jeff Bridges, who plays Obadiah Stane, business partner and surrogate father to Iron Man's alter ego, millionaire industrialist (and munitions manufacturer) Tony Stark, warns not to underestimate Favreau's responsibility for the finished film.
"What really attracted me was the chance to work with Jon Favreau - I love Swingers - and Robert Downey Jr.," he says. "Both of those guys are interesting choices for Marvel to make, especially with Jon, heading up this big comic-book movie.
"Hearing Jon's take on the thing," Bridges says, "how he wanted to make it grounded in reality - he hit that right tone."
Favreau, born in Queens, N.Y., in 1966, has an instinctive feeling for the way city kids can deflect fantasy with a wisecrack - and then buy into it anyway. That combination of cheek and sincerity has been a benchmark of his directorial efforts. It's what made Swingers a hip vision with a heart of gold, Elf a family-film smash and Zathura a video hit in family rooms (and game rooms) everywhere. And it's what keeps Iron Man stirring and funny even when its hero goes on the offensive about corruption within the military-industrial complex.
Favreau may have looked like an odd choice to helm a potential superhero blockbuster when Marvel announced him for Iron Man. But for most of his career, he's maintained a healthy balance between sass and sentiment. Swingers depicted barely employed actors in Los Angeles living an overgrown Gen X version of a hedonistic Rat Pack life, but underneath the retro-chic and bad-boy wit was a yearning for something sweet and simple.
His breakthrough, the Christmas comedy Elf, was flippantly sweet - novel, because it had real Yuletide spirit as well as the charming incongruity of lumbering Will Ferrell in an elf suit. Favreau should have notched another pop milestone with the underrated Zathura, a charming, scantly promoted storybook adventure about a '50s game of outer-space exploration that comes to life and helps unite a pair of battling brothers.
Favreau says making movies has allowed him to "delve into these areas that you've locked away, and somehow pull the lid off of them and explore them, whether it's emotional themes, parent themes, death themes - or, as in Elf, shooting places that you wanted to have the run of when you were growing up: locking up and controlling Sixth Avenue for a few nights. It's a big deal that allows you to make peace with things within you. All the things you think scarred you a little are really your gifts creatively."
