Iron Man Aims His Repulsors at Animation - IGN
- ️Scott Collura
- ️Wed Jan 17 2007
IGN hopped on the phone earlier today with Craig Kyle, vice president of creative development for animation at Marvel Studios and executive producer of The Invincible Iron Man, to discuss the newest adventure of the animated Iron Man as well as the parallels between the cartoon incarnation and his comic book and live-action counterparts.
"Obviously, Iron Man is a huge character for us both in our history and in the present day," says Kyle. "We've got the live-action film coming. It's our first live-action film as a studio now, so it's a character we're really excited about and one that we didn't really think had had his day in the sun like a Spider-Man or a Hulk or the X-Men. And since he had a lot of exposure in our Ultimate Avengers films and a lot of good reactions from the fans and people who had seen those, he just seemed like a real natural choice [for our next animated project]. And he's got such a great story. It's kind of like everything fell together: the right time, the right character, and I think ultimately from a story standpoint we have the perfect retelling of his origin."
In the classic Iron Man origin story (Tales of Suspense #39 in March of 1963, natch), Stark gets caught up in the Vietnam War where his heart is seriously wounded. In a move to save his own life, as well as temporarily appease his captors who require that the scientist create weapons for them, he builds a suit of armor that ultimately helps his heart to function normally -- and allows him to escape. Iron Man was thus born, and his many different styles and suits of armor that would follow over the years would be matched perhaps only by Madonna in the "reinventing oneself" sweepstakes. This origin story, however, needed some updating for the animated film. Placing it during the Vietnam War, for one thing, didn't really make sense anymore.
"It's really based on his classic origin, which is the refrigerator suit, and the abduction, and the injury to his heart, and all of that," says Kyle. "We did pull it out of the Vietnam War to update it, and we did adjust the scenario of the … artificial heart. But we tried to make precision cuts as opposed to just gouges or massive changes, and by changing the environment of where he was captured and those who took him, we were able to pull in some of the more classic villains that he's faced in the books and that fans are really supportive of and anxious to see Iron Man face. So we made as few adjustments as possible, to just update the story and not lose sight of what we wanted to see from a classic Iron Man story."
Specifically, the action is moved to the modern day, where Stark gets embroiled in a millennia-old plot in China that will lead to the resurrection of the mystical villain known as the Mandarin -- an old standby from the Iron Man rogues gallery. Kyle reveals that former Marvel Studios boss Avi Arad contributed to this updating of the tale, and that the planning of the live-action film coincided with the scripting of the animated version.
"Actually, the slate was still kind of being constructed at that time. They were figuring out what their top 10 films would be [in live-action], and we already had our short list and were already working on the scripted version," he says. "Avi was still with us, and he had a real specific vision of the elements he wanted to see included in this story -- the kinds of characters, the kinds of suits, the environments. And so he really put that to [writer] Greg [Johnson] and me to consider when trying to recreate the classic origin, and he also wanted to bring in some of the characters that fans love about Iron Man and would love to see [included] in this retelling of his origin. So there were a lot of elements that were put in front of us that we wanted to be included, and Greg Johnson did a beautiful job I think of taking the past, the present, and the ultimate future of the character and rolling them all into this retelling."
There were no restrictions placed on the animated production by the live-action team (which has not always been the case with Marvel's competitors, DC, who have sometimes seen certain characters made persona non grata in their animated Justice League series because of plans to use them in live-action). But still, Kyle sees the various formats as different mediums anyway, each one well-suited to specific ways of telling a particular character's story, be it live-action, animation, or comic books.
"You can tell the same character's story and they're really going to be three very different versions," he says. "They'll all contain the essence of the character and the classic story, but the things you can pull off and do in a comic are different than what you can pull off in animation, which is also true in animation versus live-action. So we were able to kind of go for it in a way that I think the live-action guys would really struggle to pull off while maintaining that emotional, realistic connection to the audience. And that's not to say that they're not going to make a brilliant movie -- they are. I've seen bits and pieces of the story they're constructing. The cast is fantastic. So that's going to be an amazing, amazing movie."
That said, the animated Iron Man can get away with a bit more in the realm of two-fisted action and magical subplots.
"We were able to do a little more cape and costume, a little more sword and sorcery, a little more mysticism, and stay more connected to the kind of visuals that you see in the comics where it all began and where the truest stories are told," he says. "So I think in this movie we kind of got the best of both worlds: an epic tale like they're going to do in the live-action, but with some of the fantasy that needs to be adjusted when you're approaching a major motion picture with live actors."
The new animated film is also noteworthy for its use of computer-generated animation. While it has become standard practice to use CG to create vehicles and machines in a traditional hand-drawn animated picture like this, Kyle and his team elected to take that process to its next logical step and use computers to animate all of the Iron Man footage. After all, Shellhead's armor is a vehicle in its own right, and perfectly suited to that design style. The character had previously been created with standard hand-drawn animation in the two Ultimate Avengers films, so this decision did represent a technical hurdle for the filmmakers.
"We've been very cautious about how we handle CG in our other films, because unless you're spending Pixar money and have their kind of timetables, it's very tough to have flesh and blood characters emote and act as well as a hand-drawn character can," explains Kyle, who also adds that some of the villains of Iron Man were also animated with CG. "But Iron Man lent itself to using CG in the best ways, so all of the suits, the Elementals, and even Fing Fang Foom were done in CGI. I think they did a beautiful job matching the 2-D environment, the painted backgrounds, with the 3-D models. It was an experiment, and one that we feel largely works great for the project. It really comes down to lighting and texturing. It's so easy for something to just pop right off the film and [look like it's] lying right on top of this film running behind it. It was not an easy task and it took us right down to the wire."
As with his Pixar comment above, Kyle admits that the budgets and schedules of the Marvel direct-to-DVD films are limited. But he thinks that the devotion of the people who work on these films -- not to mention the fact that they're all fans of the Marvel characters themselves -- makes up for these restrictions in many ways.
"These are an experiment for us," he says. "This is the Old West for us. Everyone involved, from the preproduction to the studios overseas to the post guys, is putting everything they've got into these to make them look as great as they possibly can. Because the fans deserve it, and if we have success here it opens the door for more money and longer schedules and theatrical [releases] down the road. We're just trying to entertain everybody and open up more doors for ourselves as we move forward."
And while Kyle realizes that his position means that he'll inevitably make some viewers unhappy with the decisions he makes ("That's always the toughest part here," he says. "Fans very quickly cry foul when we adjust anything."), he also says that he doesn't subscribe to the old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" adage. He and his team go through every piece of their characters' comics to see what they can translate to the screen and keep the fans happy -- while also hopefully bringing in new viewers and possibly new lifelong fans. Ultimately, though, while cosmetic revisions to a character might be made -- like Stark's dated origin getting a fresh start here -- the spirit of the characters will always remain intact as long as Kyle is in charge.
"Come on, Iron Man in action? Fighting these great villains? Who's not going to get behind that?" he says with a laugh. "But you want the emotional stuff. Tony is our James Bond. He's a ladies man, he's a playboy, he's fun -- he's someone that a lot of guys would like to be and that a lot of ladies would admire when they find [those qualities] in guys. You can't lose those attributes because if you start making those kinds of changes, unless you're shooting for the six to 11 [age group] solely on a Saturday morning series, then you're really doing a disservice to the film that we're creating. So this whole thing is really about striking a balance. If you look at the films we're doing for the theaters, they're PG-13, which I think everyone agrees is the perfect place for us unless you're doing a Punisher or a Blade, something that requires a darker edge. And we want something that the kids will enjoy. So you've got the older fans, but also something the kids can come in and sit on the couch and watch with them -- without needing therapy. It's a fine line!"