‘Iron Man 3’ scribe Drew Pearce discusses film’s big departure from comic canon
Posted September 23, 2013 6:00 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO – Despite writing its script, Drew Pearce can only wish that “Iron Man 3” could have featured more Jon Favreau, who plays bumbling bodyguard Happy Hogan in the blockbuster hit.
“I’d literally watch Favreau on screen for 12 hours if I had the chance,” said the British-born Pearce, in an interview from his office in Los Angeles.
There was certainly a lot of Favreau in the first two installations of the “Iron Man” franchise, which follows billionaire playboy Tony Stark who, ensheathed in an armoured suit, moonlights as a high-tech superhero. In addition to his role as Hogan, Favreau directed the two movies before departing, replaced at the top by Shane Black, who co-wrote the script with Pearce.
So you can forgive Pearce for forgetting he and Black actually cut some of the former director’s scenes from the film.
“I was first in the door and I was there in the edit suite right up until the moment it had to be released into the world — and what that means is I saw (the movie) in the edit suite 300 times,” he said.
“There are things that are cut in the final two weeks because that’s when you make some of your biggest editorial decisions, oddly enough. So Shane and I will be talking and forget that a scene like Jon’s didn’t even make it in the movie.
“But truthfully the story just needed to move faster. The thing you get down to in an edit suite is, ‘Do I really, really need this and, if I don’t need it, is it so good that I’m willing to slow down the movie for it?'”
Pearce, 38, has become a hot ticket in the world of blockbuster hits, with contributions to “Pacific Rim” and the announcements that he would pen the scripts for “Sherlock Holmes 3” and “Mission: Impossible 5.” But while he sometimes senses the stigma toward these big-budget films, he says his experience writing for U.K. television makes it easy to dismiss any charges of selling out.
“As far as perception is concerned, I would controversially say it’s as hard if not harder to make a good blockbuster than to make a good, chatty indie, and I know that because mostly what I’ve done has a chatty, indie vibe, and there are many more plates to spin on a movie like ‘Iron Man 3,'” he said.
“But in truth, I think the world’s a better place for all of the above. The fact that it has a number on the end of it, if someone were to be snobby about it, their opinion doesn’t matter as much to me as the person who went and adored it.”
Those bona fides give the scribe credibility when making bolder decisions — like cutting a scene from the franchise’s former director.
But that wasn’t even Pearce’s most daring decision in “Iron Man 3”: The film features a bold take on the Mandarin, a villainous martial artist who is regarded as one of Iron Man’s main antagonists in the comics, and is portrayed in the movie by the venerable actor Ben Kingsley. However, the major supervillain is defanged on the big screen in the interests of cinematic storytelling — one of the more significant departures taken by a film adaptation since Marvel’s first, 2002’s “Spider-Man.”
But while some comic aficionados have crucified the change to such a major canonical character, Pearce doesn’t even think it’s the most significant twist of the franchise.
“I like to think ‘Iron Man,’ the first one, sort of set the pace (where Stark announces to the world that he is Iron Man) — that’s a twist without precedent in the superhero genre,” he said.
“But as far as bold gestures go, what we did with the Mandarin is definitely unexpected and, on a meta level, unexpected in big blockbusters. There’s a smaller contingent that were aghast at the Mandarin than maybe the volume of the Internet suggests — that’s what I’d hope.”
Pearce, who says he’s “as big an Iron Man fan as you’ll find anywhere,” said the decision also came from a dispassionate and honest assessment of the villain and what he really means in the Iron Man continuity.
“Nobody can tell you a great, classic Mandarin story in any run in the last 60 years of the comic. So actually, I don’t think he is Voldemort or Darth Vader — I think he’s a character whose Wikipedia presence in the Iron Man canon is stronger than its actual storytelling presence,” he said.
“And there’s an argument that’s oft said, that he’s a racial stereotype in the comics. He was created as kind of anti-Vietnam propaganda in the ’60s. You could argue that what he was created for in the comic books is what we do with him in the movie; we’re just aware of it. The idea of him is actually more powerful than what is actually there.”
With the film’s Blu-ray release forthcoming, Pearce said he hopes that those miffed at the depiction will “make peace with it.” And it certainly seems like he’ll get more opportunities to put his stamp on the Marvel universe, anyway: While he declined to comment on what future Marvel projects he would get a chance to work on, he did offer a seemingly affirmative nugget.
“If I told you (what was next for Pearce in the Marvel pipeline), then the Disney assassins posted on every corner of my block would take me down in an instant,” he joked.
“But the movies that I viscerally adored when I was eight and 14 years old are often the ones I still love now, and I think the eight- and 14-year-olds will look on the best of the Marvel movies as we look on ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ and ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Back to the Future.'”
“Iron Man 3,” which stars Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Don Cheadle, comes out on Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday.
