Jon Favreau has revealed that he built on the best parts of 2008's Iron Man when making the sequel.
The actor and filmmaker is back behind the camera with his second Iron Man movie, which has just topped the UK box office.
Favreau admitted that the tome of the movie and the relationship between Tony and Pepper was something that was really popular and he tried to build from there.
Speaking to Comingsoon.net he said: "Well, you know you dance with who brought you like they say, but change your game up. What did people like the first time? They liked the tone, they liked the sense of humour, they liked Pepper and Tony, so those are the things we knew that we wanted to make sure we expanded upon that.
"But there was room to have more action. A lot of time was spent when he was in captivity and the action was kind of personal in the origin story, unfortunately for us, so that left a lot of room. We had about 700 digital shots last time, now we have like 1400, so we sort of doubled up on everything.
"Because the first one wasn't really that big in scope, even with doubling it, it still doesn't feel overwhelming for the film. It feels like probably enough action but not too much. And then we added some characters, too, and we needed a good villain.
"That was something we did have last time, and we knew that with number 2, you actually had a shot. Certainly on superhero movies, often times, number 2 is the best, so we knew that there was a way to succeed.
"If you do a sequel to a comedy it's tough. I can't think of any where the sequel is better, but a superhero movie... you can argue that "X-Men 2," "Spider-Man 2," "Dark Knight"... those were all better than the first.
"So I wanted to keep the plot simple and as we added characters, not to add storylines. I think that's where superhero movies can go wrong, too, is if you have too many villains, then it becomes overly-complex.
"Here, all the characters we introduced, we start them apart from each other, but then the stories slowly combine until you work towards the end and it culminates with one big (moment) where the storylines intersect, as opposed to have four and five threads that you have to follow through the whole film.
Robert Downey Jr returns as Tony Stark while Gwyneth Paltrow also returns to the role of Pepper Potts. But Favreau added in Scarlett Johansson, Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell while properly introducing Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.
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