SDCC’12: ‘Iron Man 3’ Panel and Trailer Description

So this is it the Panel many have been waiting for, the final major studio panel of the day and what better way to conclude the day then with the Marvel Panel. Rumors have been running wild all day long about what they could possible be announcing during the panel. The one thing everyone knew that would be there was, of course, Iron Man 3, but what else? Could it be the rumored Ant-Man test footage Edgar Wright shot a few weeks back? Maybe it is the Guardians of the Galaxy announcement for 2014? Or maybe the strangest rumor I have seen was regarding the official title for Thor 2, which is rumored to be Thor: The Darkest World? Lets just say that so much was disclosed during this panel my brain almost exploded trying to comprehend everything coming at me, because of that I have broken the Marvel Panel into three stories. This one, The Ant-Man footage, and finally the Marvel Future Line-up

Ah yes the Iron Man 3 panel, where to begin. Lets keep it simple and work our way through. Robert Downey Jr. made a grand appearance by coming into Hall H from the back of the hall and dancing his way to the stage with an Iron Man glove on his hand. I don’t know the song he was dancing to, however he had it choreographed and was rocking out to it. Once he made his way to the stage he sat down as if he owned the place and said, “lets see some footage, queue the trailer.”

The trailer starts with Tony telling Jarvis to play something festive and on comes the Run DMC Christmas song, (Shane Black had to work Xmas in there somehow). Anyways Tony begins motioning to his armor which is sitting on a table and the armor flies onto, well minus a few pieces over shooting and missing their mark.  His mask is the last piece to make its way to him and Tony sees it floating in the air and says “I’m not afraid of you” and the mask shoots over to him and with a quick flip in the air Tony and the face mask become one and we get our first look at the new armor. Next we see a funny interaction between Happy Hogan and Tony about how Happy quit because he was getting made of for being Iron Man’s bodyguard, Happy makes the witty remark about Tony having his “Super Friends” now (Take that DC!)  We then transition to the “threat of the film and a voice is overheard on the screen saying how people are calling the voice a terrorist and that he doesn’t believe that heroes exist, during this voice over we see many cut scenes of damage and destruction and finally see Pepper and Tony looking out the mansions big ocean side window and 3 helicopters appear and blow the place up sending Tony and Pepper flying back. As the voice over continues talking about how his town is his now, there is a quick montage of Iron Man battling or being tossed into the ocean, we get to see Rhodes and the new War Machine armor (which is the armor that was painted in the patriotic colors and was in the spy photos). Then cut to the title screen. Evil voice is still talking and we first see a shot of a man with rings on his hands (7 to be exact) and then we get a shot of the man from behind cocking a gun, then we see him sitting on a throne like chair and it is none other then The Mandarin played by Ben Kingsley.

There was so much awesomness packed into this trailer it was shown twice and I still cant comprehend what I saw. I want to explain a few things before getting into the actual panel and Q&A portion of things.  It seems that Tony either has some sort of new technology to control the armor or it was our first unspoken or mentioned glimpse of him after being injected with the “nanotechnology” that so many have suggested. There is another quick scene where Tony looks really sick and out of it with the armor in pieces around him.  Is this the extremis story line? No clue but that was probably the only mystery that wasn’t answered in the panel.

Anyways lets get to the Q&A portion because there were some great questions asked and some funny moments. At this point Don Cheadle, Shane Black and Jon Favreau came out to join RDJ and Kevin Feige.

• RDJ made a reference to Don Cheadle about how he loved him as Captain Planet which got a rouse out of the crowd (There is a Funny or Die Short featuring him as Captain Planet)
• RDJ also makes a joke that he is the sole reason for Schawarma sales increasing 700%, nice little Avengers nod, then jokes about them actually shooting one more ending for the DVD.
• A girl asked a very interesting question regarding Pepper Potts if we would ever see her dawn the rescue suit. RDJ jokes and said he had no idea what she was talking about and would Pepper be rescuing him from the bar? Everyone on the panel though said they all really want to see Gwyneth Paltrow dawn a suit and kick ass but didn’t say if we would see that in this film (My guess is no)
• Shane Black took a cheap shot at the Spider-Man 3 film by saying that even though there are a ton of new characters in the film, all of them work together and aren’t separate entities like they were in Spider-Man 3. This got a bit of a chuckle out of the crowd.
• I don’t quite remember how it got started but Cheadle mentioned it took him about 30 minutes each time to get into the War Machine armor, he asked RDJ how long it took him and he said 3 minutes. Cheadle’s response was that it was due to racism and gets up and leaves the stage but returns, but RDJ said that Cheadle had a bigger gun. At this point a guy from the crowd walks to the mic in a complete Iron Man costume and Favreau asks how long it took him to get in the suit and the guy said 5 minutes, which caused Cheadle to get up and leave once again claiming racism.
• Another girl asked when we could expect to see Bruce Banner again  Feige’s response, “ Remember at the end of The Avengers when Bruce gets in the car with Tony?” Crowd is going nuts, “Well Tony dropped him off at Port Authority!” AWWWW
• Probably the most important question, which I was glad was asked, was regarding RDJ and his contract being up at the end of Iron Man 3. RDJ said that both he and Cheadle were both signed until Iron Man 3 and that once they wrap on Iron Man 3 then they can discuss with Feige about what type of ‘Brinks’ truck they want. Don’t worry people they will come to an agreement, RDJ is going nowhere, Cheadle may be another story.