“Just Drive Each Other Insane”: Robert Downey Jr, Mark Ruffalo Say They Didn’t Always Understand Marvel Dialogues
Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo recently reflected on their Marvel days while revealing that they weren't entirely sure what their characters were saying.

Marvel stars Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo recently caught up with each other for a conversation about their respective performances in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ and Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘Poor Things’. At Variety’s Actors on Actors studio, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo talked about several other things including their Marvel days. And even admitted that there were times when they didn’t understand their Marvel dialogues. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is a franchise intricately connected between its entries, with one film or series featuring plot threads and characters that first popped up in previous projects.
Given there are so many projects in the franchise, it is sometimes difficult to keep up with everything. Recently while reflecting on their Marvel days, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo admitted that even they didn't always understand the dialogues they had to learn for the superhero flicks as their "science bros" characters.
Mark Ruffalo said how unusual the casting felt, and added, “It was such a different world. They didn’t really cast people like us. I’ll never forget, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m right for this.’ And you’re like, ‘Come on, Ruffalo, we got this.’”
Robert Downey Jr. added, “Well, I mean, in the Marvel days, everything might change or we’re talking to a tennis ball. You and I, the science bros, we would’ve these long passages about absolute gobbledygook…But still it's important to us because we know it's important to the characters.”
"We didn’t know what that was, what that meant," Mark Ruffalo said of some of the jargon. "It’d be really hard to dig in," Robert Downey Jr. agreed.
He added, “I mean, we would just drive each other insane on set going, why can’t I retain this? But again, we know when it's time to tighten things up a little bit.”
Robert Downey Jr later added how that experience from his Marvel films helped him with the role in Christopher Nolan's ‘Oppenheimer’.
He said, “I found great joy in [making Oppenheimer]. It was this moment where we were shooting something in Pasadena and Nolan just put this mag of 70 millimeter [film] — they were changing out mags, and he was like, 'Hold this.' And he just put it on my lap.”
“Yeah, I will continue to love and I’m happy to eventually in some way reengage with sci-fi fantasy. It’s got its own upside. But anything that over time takes you further and further away from the experience of just the hardware of what it is we do — which is why it was also beautiful just to be shooting on film, not digital. I got used to digital after Zodiac because I knew if Fincher’s doing it, it’s not going away. And is it more efficient? Yes. But you lose those natural rhythms of changing out the mag. It was just those little times everyone socialized,” he added.
Robert Downey Jr. became a household name after starring as Tony Stark/Iron Man in ten films within the MCU, starting from ‘Iron Man’ till ‘Avengers: Endgame’. Meanwhile, Mark Ruffalo portrayed Bruce Banner/Hulk in the MCU.