Legendary actor Jeff Bridges starred as Obadiah Stane in the first MCU film Iron Man. The Big Lebowski star was the first villain of the shared cinematic universe and he is often considered to be one of the better antagonists of the MCU. Stane does not directly appear in any other installment of the franchise.
Bridges mentioned the stressful experience of filming Iron Man as most of the film was improvised after Marvel disapproved of the script that director Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. had come up with. It got so bad that Favreau had to finally convince Bridges to think of it as a large-scale student film for the actor to completely give in to the process.
Production Of Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man
The foundation of the multi-billion dollar franchise that is the MCU was laid with the Robert Downey Jr. starrer Iron Man. The film was the first independent production of Marvel Studios and was one of the few IPs that they still had rights to. Kevin Feige and Avi Arad produced the film and hired Jon Favreau to direct the feature.
Initially, there was reportedly a lot of pushback against the casting of Robert Downey Jr. as he had a bad reputation in the industry at that time due to his personal and legal troubles. However, Favreau stuck to his guns and did not budge on the casting. Hence, other stars such as Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges were brought on board to give more credibility to the project.
Bridges mentioned in an interview with Vanity Fair, that Favreau and Downey Jr. were great at improvising and had come up with a script that they were satisfied with, but that was ultimately rejected by Marvel. He said,
“It was so lucky to have Jon on there and [Robert] Downey, because both of them are so, they’re terrific improvisers, and we spent a couple of weeks working on the script and rehearsing together…And then came the first day of shooting, and Marvel kind of threw out our script that we had been working on, said, ‘No, that’s no good. It’s got to be this and that.’”
Bridges mentioned that the team used to spend hours in their trailer trying to come up with lines and improvising on the existing material.
Jeff Bridges Had A Tough Time Working On The Film Initially
Actor Jeff Bridges had over fifty years of experience in the film industry before he starred in Iron Man. While the actor had his share of blockbusters when he starred in films such as Tron, he also starred in multiple mid-budget productions such as The Big Lebowski, The Fisher King, and others. The star had done it all in his illustrious career.
Hence, Bridges initially found it difficult to adjust to the rapid improvisation and on-the-go filmmaking of Iron Man. Despite being a film with a $140 million budget and a production house like Marvel behind it, the film was mostly improvised with scenes being written on the fly by Favreau.
Bridges revealed that he found it hard to adjust to the process initially until Favreau gave him a hack to fool his brain. He said,
“It drove me absolutely crazy until I made a slight adjustment in my brain and that adjustment was, ‘Jeff, just relax. You’re making a $200 million student film. Just relax and have fun.’ And that kind of did the trick because here I get to play with these two incredible artists and just jam, and that’s what we ended up doing.”
This ‘improvised’ film ended up laying the foundations for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and creating the highest-grossing franchise of all time. Jeff Bridges mentioned that Iron Man was his favorite Marvel film.
