Robert Downey Jr. is an actor who likes to speak his mind. Or someone else’s mind. I’m not actually quite sure where he gets his ideas from, like when he decided to diss DC a few months ago by claiming that he didn’t understand The Dark Knight. I really don’t know what there was to “understand” about The Dark Knight. I’m honestly not sure that RDJ does either.

His life and career have been a roller-coaster of ups and downs, from stardom to prison and back again. He’s on one his ups now, and hopefully it’s a permanent one – while many were skeptical at his casting (and Jon Favreau’s direction) for Iron Man, fans have fallen in love with his pitch-perfect portrayal of the alcoholic billionaire. While his snarky remarks about The Dark Knight were undoubtedly just pandering to fans – the guy has probably never picked up a comic book in his life – recently, he dealt out some much-appreciated honestly about the future of the Iron Man/Avengers franchise.

“If we don’t get it right it’s really, really going to suck,” said Downey. “It has to be the crowning blow of Marvel’s best and brightest because it’s the hardest thing to get right. It’s tough to spin all the plates for one of these characters.”

…

“I think it’s important that I do what I’m supposed to do which is keep my side of the street clean,” said Downey. “The danger you run with colliding all these worlds is [director] Jon [Favreau] was very certain that ‘Iron Man’ should be set in a very realistic world. Nothing that happened in ‘Iron Man’ is really outside the realm of possibility. Once you start talking about Valhalla and supersized super soldiers and jolly green giants it warrants much further discussion.”

I think calling Iron Man a “very realistic world,” especially when you pit it against Christopher Nolan’s vision, is a bit of a stretch. And how is The Hulk more unbelievable than a dude in a flying suit? The army experiments on soldiers all the time, and while we’re hopefully decades away from a not-so-jolly green giant, science-gone-wrong makes more immediate sense than a magical flying suit. Did anyone else see that episode of Mythbusters where they tried to make a rocket pack? Yeah. It doesn’t work.

Even so, it’s really nice to see a lead actor actually take interest in the future of a nerdy franchise and express his honest opinion – that it’s really going to suck if they don’t handle it right. It shows that he understands the importance of what he’s doing.

Thanks, Robert.

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