In the canon of important modern directors, I’m honestly
surprised that Jon Favreau doesn’t get brought up more often in conversation.
Sure, his work is sometimes hit-and-miss with critics (sometimes for no good
reason like with Cowboys & Aliens) but when you put him into context with
the current state of superhero films, he played a crucial role in getting where
we are right now. 2008’s Iron Man was a serious make-or-break situation for the
Marvel Cinematic Universe; if they screwed up, we wouldn’t have gotten the
proceeding 8 years of astoundingly consistent output from Marvel Studios.
Hindsight does funny things to people, and sure, Robert Downey Jr. set a precedent for pitch-perfect casting in Marvel films, but if it wasn’t for Favreau’s engagingly populist style, we’d be looking at a far different landscape right now. After the lukewarm response to Iron Man 2, which admittedly wasn’t amazing but still decent, he went on to Cowboys & Aliens… and then he made Chef, which was basically his own admission of how difficult it is to break out of the big leagues and just make his own products. Well, he seems to be working with Disney once again with today’s film, a re-telling of one of Disney’s perennial classics.
Hindsight does funny things to people, and sure, Robert Downey Jr. set a precedent for pitch-perfect casting in Marvel films, but if it wasn’t for Favreau’s engagingly populist style, we’d be looking at a far different landscape right now. After the lukewarm response to Iron Man 2, which admittedly wasn’t amazing but still decent, he went on to Cowboys & Aliens… and then he made Chef, which was basically his own admission of how difficult it is to break out of the big leagues and just make his own products. Well, he seems to be working with Disney once again with today’s film, a re-telling of one of Disney’s perennial classics.
