Avengers: Endgame saw Iron Man and Captain America finally make up after falling out in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, but not before Tony Stark managed to land a few more verbal blows on his old friend Steve.
In particular, you may recall the scene in the recent movie where the two MCU stars come face to face for the first time in years. Still recovering from his drift through space, Tony isn’t in the best of moods, and has yet to let go of his grudge against Cap, labeling the First Avenger a “liar.” As it turns out, that moment was largely the making of Robert Downey Jr., who improvised the sequence to the delight of co-director Anthony Russo.
“I think that was one of Downey’s most inspired performance moments in the movie,” Russo told Empire. “He very much reverts to, this is the guy who felt forsaken by his father – you can see his intimacy and trust issues in that moment when he turns on Cap. Downey performed the scene with a lot of energy. We didn’t do it many times, because he was expending himself so, so much. He understood it very well.”
From the sound of things, Downey was given a fair amount of creative freedom for his Endgame performance, both here and elsewhere. In an interview earlier this year with The Hollywood Reporter, Anthony even went as far as to praise the actor as “a really brilliant filmmaker in his own right,” adding that he brings “a tremendous amount of energy” to the process.
Meanwhile, Anthony’s brother Joe Russo has been similarly enthusiastic about Downey’s performance. In an interview last month with the Washington Post, for instance, the co-director made the bold claim that Downey “deserves an Oscar perhaps more than anyone in the last 40 years” for his work in the MCU.
You can expect to hear more on the matter when Avengers: Endgame begins its Oscar campaign later in the year, but in the meantime, we’ll find out how Peter Parker processes the death of his mentor when Spider-Man: Far From Home hits theaters on July 2nd.
