Can you talk about the origin story behind “Iron Man”? Did you try to please the geeks?

DOWNEY JR. The origin story is pretty clear, and we update it and try to modernize it and make it watchable, but pretty much from the time I was cast, and they saw the first Mark 1 suit, it’s that kind of crazy Senate in the democracy where their votes count a lot more, you know? But by the time we were at Comi-con and showed them cut footage, I felt like, "Okay, our sensibilities and theirs are finding a compatibility." It’s funny, it probably speaks more to Jon and I being geeks at heart than we were pressure molding our movie into a movie they wanted.

Your relationship with Jeff's character is kind of fun because Jeff doesn't play in this as much.

DOWNEY JR.: It was great, because Jeff came in and he would be like, "Guys, we should improvise on this scene." And we’re shooting in two weeks and we haven’t even figured out what the sequences are. We got two raptors and he’s fighting the F-22s and I’m like, "What? How? Why?" And Jeff’s like, "Look, I got this Alan Watts lecture I downloaded on my iPod. We should check it, it’s like two hours and ten minutes." He wound up really bringing us to where we felt like we had permission to do what we wanted to do anyway, which was get to know each other and talk about this stuff. He said that I’m not fixing to show up here and be that two dimensional bad guy. As it happens, he’s kind of like The Dude meets Dr. Doom. It’s awesome. We talked about that Tokamak Reactor and every time we got to that he’d go, "What does that mean?" And we’d go back to the origin story. The Tokamak Reactor is a thing they built to shut the hippies up. But as it happens, it winds up saving his life. So it’s hard to say what has value at the end of the day when you’re in the clinch. It was really some of my favorite stuff, because I’ve come up and I’m a little younger than Jeff, but he’s been someone who I’ve seen have this very interesting balanced career and he’s just a national treasure.

Have you seen it with an audience yet?

DOWNEY JR.: Yeah, I’ve seen it a couple of times. I’ve seen it around the world here and there. Oftentimes it sucks because they start the credits and we’ve entered the movie and then we’re hustled out to go to some show or whatever. The coolest for me was Jon and I at the end of a twelve hour day got in some cars in Seoul Korea and went to a military base and did an impromptu screening for a bunch of the service men and women and their kids. That was something else. That really kind of gave us a shot in the ass.

How strong is the impulse to make a movie for teenagers?

DOWNEY JR.: I always wonder when people say, "This one’s for the kid." You know, it’s like, "Did the kid say go do that one, or are you deciding what the kid wants to see?" My thing is when Indio saw it - and he hasn’t seen it in its fully complete form... Jon and I were both at the end of the screening with a couple of hundred people on the Paramount lot, "Dude, what do you think?" He was like, "It works, it’s cool. It’s kind of like funny. It’s a little different. Ah dad, this weekend can I - my friends, we want to go see a concert." And I was like, I got what I wanted now he’s gonna get what he wants.

What would keep your interest in this character?

DOWNEY JR. Jon and I have become brothers, and they schedule a few down days so you don’t become postal. I think they’re really smart at this stuff. And they left, and we’re like hanging out and blowing a cigar. We’re like each other’s wives when our wives aren’t there. He’s apprehensive about flying and I’m trying not to fly off the handle when people are trying to invade my space. So it’s like March of the Penguins, we’re trying to keep the egg warm until the winter breaks. But what’s always interested me in any idea was who am I working with and how far could we take this? You can’t take something of one that is any further and you do something else. This is the first opportunity I had--we were talking about this ass-kicking opening sequence, if we do another one and the sensibilities of Europe and around the world we’ve gotten political feedback, which is ridiculous because it’s a fantastic idea. It doesn’t matter anymore. In this sound bite information age, people don’t read an entire sentence before they combat it or what they think you need to say. It’s unfortunate but the upside of it is we get feedback in real time and the onus is on us if we do it again to go deeper in some ways. Often times I hear the first one is where you get all the mistakes out of the way, and if you do it well enough, you get repeat customers. I don’t want to ever say, "Relax," because Jon and I drilled each other, rode each other like jockeys at every point in the game here. I know it’s like I’m talking about an art movie, but we really said, "What does this mean, and what do we say when we say that? And why are these robots...," because he’s been surrounded by inanimate objects. It’s a replacement for his dad. Do those robots even move? And Gunter is like, "I can put some wheels on them." I go get him in closer they’re dumb, right? I’m going to call that dummy and you. Jon is like, "Stop. This is the fire extinguisher." Anyway, these riffs we did to make it seem real, it’s great to see an audience say, "I really like that part." And that came from this desperation to do something that was your usual two-dimensional genre movie.

Are you a technical guy?

DOWNEY JR. Well yeah, and I’m also into mythology and I think mythology and science are practically the same thing nowadays. There is something in the air, and I was reading something and it said, 'Popular Mechanics, The real Iron Man.' And it’s talking about these super soldiers that they are building, and that by 2020 they’ll be da da duh. Just the idea that you’re doing something that is so close to a relative probable future, rather than do something in 1984 that is not relevant until 1984, that is fantastic too. But the idea of to be just behind the crest of the wave, you know, but just in front of the crest of the wave thinking where it’s going to break, to me that’s really creatively exciting.

What was the most challenging part of doing this movie?

DOWNEY JR. I think the most challenging part was trusting this gack and gear was going to balance out with this naturalistic way we were doing the acting, and yeah, in a certain sense Jon will talk about Sam Rockwell who approaches a role like an artist. You give him two brush strokes and he’s off and running. And I don’t want to say I’m not an artist but I have my feeling about when I’m working is it’s an athletic endeavor and my mind’s a part of it, my nads are part of it, and my heart’s into it, and I feel like I’m always trying to make or beat a time and there are a lot of calculations. But to me the hardest part was this was a really big science project, so the algorhythms were really tricky.

How did this role change you?

DOWNEY JR. I don’t know why - I was brushing my teeth before I came down here and I was hearing, "Dude, you’re in the suit, bro." Or the five questions that people ask and they didn’t really want to come and they say, "Suit, Gwyneth, the past." What was the fucking question? What I learned about myself is that if you’re not on your team, why should anyone else be? Something like this that was considered out of the box for me, that’s what we are here to do is change expectations of ourselves. And if others react to that--I have a great metaphor and I’ll stop. Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco there’s a tank full of crabs, and then you pick them out and this and that and they are all hanging out at the bottom. And once in while you’ll see one go to the top, and it gets a little thing over and you think someone will have to come and put a thing over, but you don’t really have to because every time a crab would try to do it, another crab would pull that crab down. So you have to try and get out of the tank.