Robert Downey Jr. To Return As 'Iron Man' in Avengers Sequels

I'm sure you heard the news, that Robert Downey Jr. signed on for a two-picture deal to reprise the role of Tony Stark in the next two Avengers movies, The Avengers 2 and The Avengers 3.

The Avengers 2 is slated to go into production in March of 2014, being written and directed by Joss Whedon.

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What I find interesting is that he's only signed on for two Avengers movies and no mention is made of any additional Iron Man movies.

Sure, you could say the story of Iron Man, at least for stand-alone films, has come to a close.  But as you may have seen in The Avengers, it was literally another full chapter of Tony's life, almost making it the 3rd Iron Man movie.

But I must say, that if Downey returns for more films to play Iron Man, if Shane Black is at the helm again, I won't be racing out to see it like I did the first three films.

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Jon Favreau brought the Iron Man comic franchise to brilliant life in the first two movies, touching on points in the franchise's history and craming it into the first two movies.

But when (I presume) Marvel could not afford Favreau for the third film, they turned to Shane Black to direct.

Black made a great movie with a great story.

And in the process, made a mockery of one of the biggest bad guys in Iron Man comics franchise history.  He did away with the thematic music we've come to associate with Iron Man from the Favreau films, and pretty much glazed over the ending of Tony's dependencies on his equipment, and seemingly, his equipment's dependency on him!

He tweaked the story enough to take elements of the Extremis lore and make it different enough, skipping the entire process that Tony went through himself, with Extremis.

An aspect that I thought, was pretty critical to the furthering of the story beyond IM3.

But then after seeing what Black did to the Mandarin, well, nothing was sacred to the creative force behind the third movie in this Iron Man trilogy.

And when core franchise fans complained about the treatment of the new armor and the Iron Legion and Mandarin, his response seemed glib.  Something about how we get too complacent and accept too much for granted.  (This in response to his treatment of Mandarin.)

If there are more Iron Man movies, and Black is attached, I'm good with it.  He did make a good story for the general movie going audience.  And I hear that time and time again from folks I talk to who aren't Shellhead fans.

But I won't be rushing out to see it or getting wound up or anxious about what will probably be dozens of clips and trailers again.  If more Iron Man movies show up on the horizon. (Man, they almost told the entire movie and blew some great surprises in all the trailers.)

 -Bruce 
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