I remember watching the first MCU film in theaters. The end of Iron Man was so epic. At the press conference, Terrance Howard’s Rhodey gave him a script. But at the last moment, Stark decided to reveal that he was the one in the armor. And so, his iconic, “I am Iron Man,” replaced the distorted lyric from Black Sabbath’s song of the same name. Fast-forward eleven years later in Avengers: Endgame, in Stark’s final moments, he used the same line to spite Thanos’s, “I am inevitable.” However, it has been revealed that the line almost went differently.
Robert Downey Jr opened the 2019 People’s Choice Awards. In which, he admitted that he offered a different line for his last. Instead of bringing the character full-circle, he wanted Iron Man to have one last quip. To stay in character, RDJ offered that Stark would respond with “Oh, Snap!” That would have ushered a lot of laughs. However, what we received was an epic line to conclude an epic film, and an epic run for this cinematic character.
According to ComicBook.com, Avengers: Endgame co-director, Joe Russo, had this to say about the line,
“Tony used to not say anything in that moment. And we were in the editing room going, ‘He has to say something. This a character who has lived and died by quips. And we just couldn’t, we tried a million different last lines. Thanos was saying, ‘I am inevitable.’ And our editor Jeff Ford, who’s been with us all four movies and is an amazing storyteller, said, ‘Why don’t we just go full circle with it and say I am Iron Man?’ And we’re like, ‘Get the cameras! We have to shoot this tomorrow.’”
And so, in re-shooting that scene, Spider-Man actor, Tom Holland said,
“It was interesting because when we shot that scene with Robert there was no real script, at all. It was just Kevin Feige, the two Russo Brothers, myself, Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, and Don Cheadle. They kind of brought us to set, they kind of told us what was going to happen, or what they wanted to happen, and then we sort of just improvised if I can remember correctly.”
Avengers: Endgame is on Digital and Blu-Ray now. Therefore, you can watch that epic moment ten times over if you please. It will also be available to stream on Disney Plus. And for everything else in the MCU, stay tuned to Screen Geek.