There's one chapter per year, and I've only gotten as far as 2008 so far, but here's what I found interesting. I'm no expert, so some of the processes mentioned may be standard for other studios. But maybe for a studio making "comic book movies", it was like going that extra mile. Some excerpts that I couldn't resist quoting word-for-word.
- Executives didn't expect the first "X-Men" to amount to anything, so that freed up an assistant named Kevin Feige to immerse himself in the preproduction without interference and to learn so much.
- Feige "really started delving into the X-Men books deeply. Searching for character conflict or something for the film to sink its teeth into, because we didn't have all the money in the world to have it all be visual effects. That meant you had to focus on the characters in a different way, which is an interesting lesson I've carried with me."
- Seems like Robert Downey Jr. nailed his sceeen test even before it started. "A Mercedes comes pulling up nine hundred miles an hour. It had a dancing hula-hoop girl on the dashboard. This huge dude covered in tattoos with a long beard, crazy glasses, and a hat - who is Robert Downey Jr.'s right-hand man, Jimmy Rich - gets out, walks around, and opens up the door. From inside the depths walks Robert Downey Jr. in a pruple three-piece suit with a giant scarf. He swings the scarf over his shoulder and goes, 'Young man, which way to hair and makeup?' "
- After he signed on, Gwyneth, Jeff Bridges, etc. wanted in. "It was a real lesson for us as a studio, which was if you cast great actors, they will beget great actors. Then you will have a reputation for casting great actors, and then you will only work with great actors. That is the key to everything we do."
- I don't know if this is just covering-their-ass for past history or is a legit process of theirs. For Iron Man postproduction, they purposely set aside days for additional photography, and it's been part of the Marvel Studios process ever since. The media normally sees reshoots as a sign that something's wrong. "For Feige, the additional photography stage is never about something going wrong; it's about exploring different possibilities to help discover the best version of the movie, even if that means heading down a perilous new path."
- On Iron Man, Favreau was initially a big skeptic of .visual effects and afraid it would look bad. Victoria Alonso (visual effects producer at the time) and visual effects supervisor John Nelson taught Favreau a lot by walking him through it. "That idea of tutelage with VFX has really expanded. That's what allowed them to take a chance on new directors who don't have that background. Even if a director ends up not having a grasp of it, there is an infrastructure in place where they can help."
Obviously it wasn't all hunky-dory. The book talks about the difficulties as well - the $525 million loan hanging over their heads on Iron Man, nobody in the industry giving them much hope, etc. But I just wanted to post the highlights.
