After a bunch of movies were hyped-up at the Paramount panel at Comic-Con International (we’ll have more on them soon), they announced that as a special treat, they’d be showing “test animation” from Jon Favreau’s Iron Man instead of making everyone wait until Saturday. It was obviously a gag as they started to show cheesy animation from the ’60s cartoon and after a bit of that (and a lot of laughter from the packed auditorium), director Jon Favreau came out with his video camera in hand, shooting the audience and saying that he wanted to make sure to put it onto YouTube before anyone else could. Yup, we’d been Punk’d but we were given a special treat for the trouble.
Without much urging, he agreed to show some footage, actually a rough trailer, for the movie, rather than making everyone wait until Saturday to see Iron Man in action. It went by fairly quickly but this is what we remember:
The footage starts with Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark addressing soldiers with a speech which is paraphrased here: “Is it better to be feared than respected? I say, ‘Is it too much to ask for both?’ With that in mind, I humbly present the crown jewel of Stark Industries’ Freedom Line. It’s the first missile system to incorporate our proprietary repulsor technology.” He then says something about the best weapon being one you don’t have to fire, but he disagrees and says that the best weapon is the one you only have to fire once. “That’s how America does it.” It’s a great scene that shows the humor that Downey Jr. will be bringing to the role as do the next two scenes.
Then we see Tony Stark coming out of an event in a tuxedo and he’s stopped by a Vanity Fair reporter to ask him questions about being a “merchant of death” and he makes a snappy comeback. (We also see Favreau as his bodyguard in the scene.)
The next scene shows a bunch of military vehicles driving through the desert to the tune of an AC/DC tune with Robert Downey Jr. sitting in the back with a soldier who wants to take a picture with him. He jokes “I don’t want to see this on your MySpace” page and then the soldier makes a V sign and he says “No gang signs, please.” The soldier puts the V down and he goes “I’m just kidding.”
There’s then an explosion as they’re under attack and he runs for cover and then in the next shot, he wakes up in a cavern and opens his shirt to see a round metal device where his heart is. “What did you do to me?” he asks and a man in the cave says, “I did it to save your life,” and explains how he has put an electro-magnet hooked up to a car battery to save him.
He then starts building the suit and the next few scenes show him taking on a few Iraqi-types and we get to see the first Iron Man suit in action to the tune of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” Lots of men are shooting at him but the bullets are bouncing off him and at one point, he swings his fist and his metal arm gets lodged into the cave walls and then one of the guys attacking him walks up and tries to shoot him in the Iron Man helmet but the bullet bounces back and hits him in the head.
The next few scenes are fairly fast-paced showing lots of explosions
and a brief glimpse of Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Terrence Howard as Rhodey and a few quick scenes showing the evolution of the Iron Man armor until it gets to the most current one. (That got a huge cheer.)
We then see Iron Man in that armor flying with two jets following him behind him and he goes flying off. We see a sheet of metal and a hammer hits a chisel that imprints the Iron Man logo and then there’s another shot of the Iron Man armor flying.
The movie looks absolutely fantastic and it’ll be great to see this trailer again on Saturday! You can also view a new T-shirt for the movie that was handed out here and here.
