Movies With Butter

If you've seen any of the teasers, trailers, or stills for Iron Man 3, you know it won't have as much of the happy-go-lucky vibe of its predecessors -- in fact, it looks like Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is going to have to deal with epic amounts of pain and loss before arriving at the threequel's inevitably inspiring final act. But if you're looking for a little extra insight into what makes 3 tick, Marvel president Kevin Feige is happy to oblige.

"So much of the journey of Iron Man 3 is informed by Tony's experiences in The Avengers," Feige told MTV during a recent interview. "It's almost like post-traumatic stress: he really has retreated after the events of The Avengers into his workshop, where he's building advanced versions of his suits."

Touching on the elements of the storyline that were inspired by the Iron Man comic's Extremis storyline, Feige continued, "He has [designed] a version of the suit that can latch onto him in individual pieces ... anytime, anywhere. As he starts to realize, it's basically because he doesn't want to be out of the suit: he's seen a lot of things in Avengers and has encountered a lot of powerful people, much more powerful than he is."

And what about those clips and stills that depict Stark battered, bruised, and coping with broken armor? It's all about getting back to what makes the character so compelling, says Feige. "It brings us back to the Tony we met in the first part of Iron Man where he's removed from that convoy and brought to the cave with nothing but a box of scraps," he explained. "It's fun for all of us to watch Tony try to figure out how to get out of that scenario. Much of the movie is Tony in the middle of the country without his tools and a fairly broken suit to help him. But that's his superpower: he wasn't born on Asgard, he wasn't hit by gamma rays, and he doesn't have the super soldier serum. His power is his brain. It's fun to put Tony Stark in a corner with nothing and see how he can get out of it."

Feige also touched on other elements of the story, including why the power ring-wielding Mandarin made this installment's perfect villain, but the tidbit that might be of greatest interest to Iron Man fans is his thoughts on the future. "Characters like James Bond and Batman, whose stories go on and on and on — I think Tony is one of those characters," he mused. "Where we go directly after Iron Man 3 ... I'm not looking too far ahead ... But I do think we have more Tony Stark tales to tell, and we'll take it one movie — or maybe two movies — at a time."

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