While many a fan (if not most of them) have long since lost faith in the decision-making abilities of its baseball cap-clad boss, Marvel Cinematic Universe star Robert Downey Jr. says that despite all of the franchise’s ups and downs, writing off the ability of its head producer Kevin Feige to chart its future is “a losing bet”.
The iconic Iron Man actor offered his thoughts on the current state of the MCU while speaking with Esquire‘s Ryan D’Agostino for the publication’s April/May 2024 issue.
As their time together drew to a close, following a lengthy discussion in which topics ranged from his love of his wife Susan to his upcoming role in HBO’s The Sympathizer, Downey Jr. was asked by his host if he would ever return to his role as the MCU’s founding father, especially now that he had won an Academy Award for his supporting role as Admiral Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
In turn, the actor proudly declared, “Happily.”
“It’s too integral a part of my DNA,” said Downey Jr. “That role chose me.”
From there, the man who brought Iron Man to life on the silver screen then turned his attentions to the recent criticisms leveled against the franchise’s declining quality, next asserting, “And look, I always say, Never, ever bet against Kevin Feige.”
“It is a losing bet,” the actor then affirmed. “He’s the house. He will always win.”
Notably, despite Downey Jr.’s openness to reprising his career-revitalizing role, Marvel Studios has previously affirmed that they have absolutely zero intention of revisiting the Armored Avenger’s story following his heroic death in Avengers: Endgame.
Asked how the studio was planning to make the various plot threads of Phase Four come together in service of the franchise’s larger narrative during a February 2023 interview with Gizmodo, Marvel Studios VP of Production & Development Stephen Broussard asserted, “Well, I think one of the meta-narratives of Phase Four was about new characters. It was about new people stepping into mantles.”
“If you look at, like, Cassie [Lang in Quantumania] getting a suit and Kate Bishop [in Hawkeye], new characters being introduced like Jack in Werewolf by Night,” said Broussad. “After these first 10 years of Marvel storytelling, torches are being passed, like with Robert Downey Jr. no longer being [on the] table and stuff like that. So it was kind of like a new generation stepping to the forefront which, again, has always happened in the comics.”
Likewise, speaking to Vanity Fair for their December 2023 cover story on Downey Jr., Feige asserted that despite the studio’s recent turn to reviving various characters who have met their apparent end – Agent Coulson, Vision, and Loki to name just a few – they had no intention of giving this treatment to Tony Stark.
“We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again,” he told the publication. “We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.”
Admittedly, these public sentiments do suggest a bit of hope towards the idea that Marvel may actually treat at least one of their IPs with respect and, rather than reviving him for a quick buck, allow Iron Man’s character to rest in peace.
However, this is still Hollywood, and given how the MCU is absolutely bleeding ticket sales at this point, it should be noted that there exists a distinct, non-zero possibility that Disney could reverse course and once again place their franchise hopes on Downey Jr.’s shoulder.
(And even if they don’t outright revive Tony Stark, their recent reliance on the multiverse as a storytelling device presents a very easy way for Marvel to lazily bring him back by way of a ‘variant’ version of the hero.)
An adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam War-based fiction novel of the same name, Downey Jr.’s next project, the aforementioned The Sympathizer, in which he portrays a rotating cast of antagonists, is set to march its way onto HBO on April 12th.