“Leave before you go crazy” Robert Downey Jr. refused to star in this excellent science fiction film and finally explains why

News culture “Leave before you go crazy” Robert Downey Jr. refused to star in this excellent science fiction film and finally explains why

A missed appointment

In the 2010s, with the advent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Robert Downey Jr. was able to completely turn his image on its head and become one of Hollywood’s most prominent actors in a handful of films. The actor was in high demand at the time and was specifically scheduled to appear in an extremely ambitious science fiction feature: Gravity, the disaster film in orbit by filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón. But as the director explained to Hollywood Reporter

As we started to master the technology or define it, it became very clear to us that this was going to be a huge obstacle to their performance. I think Robert is fantastic if you give him enough freedom to completely breathe and improvise and change things. We tried it with this technology and it was not compatible. After that, we spent a week pretending nothing was happening and then we talked and finally said, “This is not going to work. It’s hard.”

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The actor’s version

In a way, Gravity is a true technical feat that used innovative technologies at the time to offer viewers a breathtaking weightless spectacle. The problem is that the conditions required to achieve such a result did not allow Robert Downey Jr. to fully express himself and did not match his way of working, as he explained on the microphone last year d’Howard Stern

All I can tell you is that I did a test with the team, surrounded by a new multisphere camera that was supposed to help them with the special effects. I’m one of those people who can get uncomfortable easily. I went there and we prepared it for 20 minutes and then I said, “This thing is crazy, is it going to last much longer?” They answered me, “Between two or four hours?” and then I told them, no, that’s not possible. In life, it’s better to know your limits and go before you go crazy.

As we know, Robert Downey Jr. did not suffer from this task, despite the resounding success of “Gravity”, which grossed more than $700 million at the box office. The actor continued his career brilliantly before receiving this year’s Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the film “Oppenheimer”. After all, the actor had just had the luxury of returning to the MCU, where he would play Dr. Doom in the next installments dedicated to the Avengers.