Jon Favreau Argued Against the Decision to Kill Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man in ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ Russo Brothers Say

Jon Favreau, the director behind the film that established the Marvel Cinematic Universe, 2008’s Iron Man, wasn’t so sure the hero should have died in Avengers: Endgame, according to the Russo brothers.

In a video interview with Vanity Fair, Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo discussed some of their most memorable scenes on projects like Community, Captain America: Civil War and their latest movie, Netflix’s The Gray Man, before breaking down Tony Stark’s final moment in Endgame, where he reveals he’s acquired all the Infinity Stones and placed them in his suit to “snap” the half of the universe back to life that Thanos wiped out in Avengers: Infinity War.

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The brothers once again touched on how they painstakingly worked through several options for Stark’s last words before they ended up using something provided offhandedly by the film’s editor, Jeffrey Ford. “It’s probably the most pressure we’ve ever had in trying to come up with a line … in any of these movies,” Joe says. “You do not want to fuck up Tony Stark’s last line.”

One source of the pressure around nailing Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr.’s franchise farewell was MCU regular and Iron Man director Favreau, “who called us up after he read the script and said to us, ‘Are you guys really going to kill Iron Man?'” Anthony recounted.

Joe goes on to describe a phone call with Favreau in which he had to “talk him off a ledge” over their decision to wrap the story on one of the MCU’s most popular heroes. “I remember pacing on the corner of a stage on the phone with Favreau trying to talk him off a ledge because he’s like, ‘You can’t do this. It’s gonna devastate people, and you don’t want them walking out of the theater and into traffic,'” he recalled, before saying, “We did it anyway.”

So, why did they move ahead with it? According to Joe, the Infinity War and Endgame directing duo felt that they “had earned the arc that would feel redemptive and emotional and uplifting and hopeful, even though he had sacrificed his life.”

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