Phil Strub went into great detail about the memorable disagreement between him and Jon Favreau that took place on the set of “Iron Man.” According to Strub, Favreau didn’t see any problem with the film’s original, unexpectedly contentious line of dialogue and its use of a “common idiom.” Strub, conversely, thought it involved “an enlisted man” making “light of suicide,” which isn’t something that he wanted to see in the superhero film.
Eventually, Favreau angrily offered to change the line so that the serviceman in question would instead joke about how he’d willingly walk over hot coals to live the same kind of life as Tony Stark. The change was immediately approved by Strub. “[Favreau] was so surprised it was that easy,” the former head of the Pentagon’s Hollywood Liaison Unit revealed. Of course, in a somewhat hilarious twist of fate, neither version of the aforementioned line was included in the final cut of “Iron Man.”
There was, however, famously a lot of improvisation on the set of the 2008 film. Indeed, it’s been previously revealed that the movie’s actors often came up with their own, original dialogue on the same days that certain scenes were shot and even between takes. Fortunately, many Marvel fans seem to agree that the cast and crew’s looser approach to that aspect of the film improved “Iron Man” and placed a greater emphasis on the chemistry between its characters. Now, it turns out that it was also Favreau’s improvisational skills that allowed him to smooth over his and Strub’s biggest disagreement — one that never ended up mattering all that much.
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