The Original Iron Man Suit Prop Had One Big Problem

The Original Iron Man Suit Prop Had One Big Problem

Robert Downey, Jr. helped turn Iron Man from a Marvel hero who was fairly recognisable to an iconic hero and a big Hollywood draw. And he did it all without being able to see.

Talking to David Letterman for his Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman, Robert Downey, Jr. shared how, in the early days of shooting the Iron Man movies, there were some unique challenges created by the film’s practical props. Namely: they blinded him.

“Initially, everything was really there,” Downey said in a clip released from the show. “They wanted to spend as little as they could on CG replacement, so I remember this helmet went on, and there’d be a shot, and I’d be in this whole suit, and they’d say: ‘All right, Robert, it’s like you landed on the roof, so when we say action, just go like that, like you just landed, and then start moving forward.’ So I put this helmet on, and it slammed closed, and I couldn’t see anything, and then these LED lights went on and it was like The Manchurian Candidate… I was absolutely blinded.”

That certainly makes acting in elaborate action sequences and character-heavy moments alike pretty challenging. Later, that would be much less of a problem, as the Marvel Studios business became a cutting-edge driver of visual effects, meaning that Iron Man’s suit, alongside pretty much every other larger-than-life element of the Marvel universe, soon enough lived only on computers. Which, from Downey, Jr.’s perspective, was likely a huge improvement.

[referenced id=”1500157″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2020/09/tony-stark-was-right-about-something-for-once/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/22/rkyaxhnffrwkwptivni6-300×169.png” title=”Tony Stark Was Right About Something for Once” excerpt=”If a man so plugged into tech that once he literally bonded himself to his fancy supersuit knows when to Log Off, then maybe we all should too.”]

“By the time we were doing the last Avengers, they’d just be like, ‘Hey, Robert, would you mind putting on — ’ ‘Helmet?! No! Yes, no. Put two dots here, and then you can paint it in later,’” he said.