I was reading this interview with Joss, and I found this bit interesting:
http://www.mania.com/mania-interview-joss-whedon_article_132802.html
Q: There's an interesting balance between the action, characters and the conflicts they have, such as Iron Man rejecting the soldier mentality Captain America had. How did you develop these characters? Any ideology involved?
JW: Well you have to write something that you believe in. Captain America was kind of my ground zero for this film. The idea of someone who had been in World War II, had seen people laying down their lives in the worst kinds of circumstances, in a world where the idea of community and the idea of a man being somebody who is a part of something, as opposed to being isolated from or bigger than or more famous than it… it’s a very different concept of manhood than what we see today. The way that it, in my opinion, has kind of devolved from Steve to Tony is fascinating.
Obviously you're not gonna stand around and speechify too much, but the idea of the soldier – the idea of the person willing to lay down their life is very different than the idea of the superhero. And since I wanted to make from the start a war movie, I wanted to put these guys through more than what they would be put through in a normal superhero movie. It was very important for me to build that concept and to have Tony reject that concept on every level so that in the end when he's really willing to lay it on the line, you get where's he's come from and how Steve has affected him.
In all the spectacle, I had missed that character arc. Well played, Whedon.
Edited By GORDON on 1336231383
