It’s nice to see when the the actor is able to talk freely about the movie their promoting, especially when it seems that they like being in it, let alone talking about it.  So, Robert Downey Jr. got to talk a bit about ‘Iron Man 3’ and director Shane Black.  Here’s what he had to say during an EW interview about getting Black on board for the movie:

The first six months of pre-pre-production when you get hired to a Marvel movie is like taking a four-year college course in humility. The strongest ones survive and they move into prep and then they shoot the movie and they still look like a human being. The great thing about Shane is the same thing that’s great about Shane’s movie is that all the moving parts within the frame of his story are so poetic and inherently entertaining and then thought out and rethought out. And then everyone all the way through really put their nose to the grindstone this time and I really felt like we were in a much safer playground [than we were with Iron Man 2] just because it was Shane’s vision. And he had a lot, lot, lot of time to figure out just one thing, which was to figure what the story would be.

Here he explains just briefly why the ‘Iron Man 2’ basically wasn’t as successful in its performance, as well as with fans, as the first one:

[Director] Jon [Favreau]and I were still kind of recovering from our lives changing so much [with the success of the first Iron Man] and then next thing we were back in the saddle again. We made do.

I like that explanation.  RDJ wasn’t trying to apologize for it, but that it was what it was, and being that it seemed the thing to do in Hollywood, they pushed out the sequel as fast as they could before the people lost interest.  *Tsk tsk* Marvel.

Then Robert explains the reason for shooting some scenes in China for this third film:

Truth be told, we [did shoot in China for about a week in December] after finishing principal photography and there will be some action there in the film. My main interplay through the whole thing was that China figures in as a destination spot for Tony for a reason but I can’t explain [more because it would reveal] one of the ongoing themes of the movie. It’s tied-in to that theme in much the same way the 10 rings [mentioned in the first Iron Man film] are tied-in to Mandarin — and always have been tied-in to the Mandarin.

via GeekTyrant.