Robert Downey Jr. is no stranger to drama in his life though his future decisions may have Marvel fans across the world up in arms. Downey is starting to contemplate the end of his run as playing the playboy billionaire Tony Stark and hang up his armor for good.
Now before we all throw our hands up in full on geek frustration that such a perfectly cast actor for arguably the most pivotal role of making the Marvel Universe come to life on the big screen is leaving, he didn’t say he was out of the picture yet.
We still have the soon to be released ‘Iron Man 3’ which brings a close to his contract for solo films though, he is still under contract for ‘The Avengers 2‘ so this isn’t the last that we’ll see RDJ as Tony. We may even luck out with a few more cameos in the upcoming ‘Thor: The Dark World’ or more likely ‘Captain America: Winter Soldier’ as that one at least will take place on Earth.
In the newest issue of GQ, this is how he phrased it:
It got me thinking about how big the message from your cosmic sponsor needs to be before you pick it up. How many genre movies can I do? How many follow-ups to a successful follow-up are actually fun? I come from a family of very innovative writers and directors and actors and artists, and the circle of friends they were in were the people I heard having pun-offs playing poker at two in the morning, and it was just the most comforting aspect of my childhood. So there’s this kind of legacy of souls from what I consider to be a very particular time in entertainment, and I’m sensing a return to that.
Still while his contract is up that doesn’t officially means that RDJ is done with the roll. While he is no longer legally bound to play the super hero that drew everyone into the larger Marvel Universe, he did have this to say that should bring everyone hope:
I put so much onus on Iron Man 3. Iron Man 3 was supposed to answer all the questions for an audience. Cure all my uncomfortable moments in the past playing this character and get in every idea that fell by the wayside the last three movies.
Then we shot the movie and I feel like there’s still a number of other things we have to do.”
Does that mean we’ll have an ‘Iron Man 4’ with RDJ as our hero? I hope so. While Marvel has already officially said they will go the James Bond route and just recast him once he’s putting down his repulsors for good, I really hope they just continue to throw buckets of money at him to keep him in the roll.
How would you feel about someone else taking up the mantle of Iron Man? Who do you think could pull off the arrogant techno-genius as well as RDJ has done to date?
