Depending on who you ask, Iron Man 3 is either one of the most inventive entries in Marvel’s Iron Man trilogy and its Phase Three slate of films or a decadent farce that totally ruins the comic book origins of an iconic villain. Seeing as how five years have passed since its release, however, ardent fans and general audiences alike tend not to think too much about the movie that was scripted and directed by star Robert Downey Jr.’s frequent collaborator, Shane Black. Enter Guy Pearce, who played the film’s villain, Aldrich Killian.
While promoting his new Netflix series The Innocents on PeopleTV, Pearce told a short but ridiculously enjoyable story about that one time he made Downey break character while filming. According to Entertainment Weekly, the break occurred while the two were filming a fight scene, and it had everything to do with Pearce’s shoes:
“I was doing the fight scene in my Birkenstocks,” Pearce tells host Lola Ogunnaike. “You didn’t see them in the movie of course” — (in the clip, Killian is wearing what look to be tech-executive appropriate loafers) — “and at a certain point [Downey] stops and goes, ‘Wait a second, are you in Birkenstocks?'”
Pearce added that Downey “sort of just had a moment of being really thrown,” which then forced him to “collect himself” and complete the scene. “This is Iron Man, surely he could deal with Birkenstocks,” he concluded, before committing the cardinal comic book sin of mixing and matching Marvel and DC Comics concepts. “But maybe that’s his Kryptonite.” Or not, since Iron Man 3 came out five years ago, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Via Entertainment Weekly)