Shane Mahan compares moving around in the Iron Man suit to wearing a giant lobster shell.
“Your biceps crash into your lats, elbow joints click into place and you can’t compress any more,” says Mahan, the special effects maestro who helped create the red and gold suit worn by Robert Downey, Jr. in both “Iron Man” and “Iron Man 2.“
But the new, improved Iron suit seen in the sequel, hitting theaters May 7, made Downey, Jr.‘s task a mite easier.
The design team shaved 20 lbs. off and made some modifications to improve flexibility. The other changes were aesthetic, but Mahan argues they make sense within the context of Tony Stark’s quirky personality.
“You can’t continue the story with the same suit. Time has passed. He’s a billionaire inventor,” Mahan says of the new suit which is more “angular and graceful” than the one used in the first film.
It took some time before the cinematic Tony Stark could walk in the fluid fashion we see on screen.
“It was an evolution with Robert,” he says. “Everyone’s first instinct is to move in a robotic way.”
The creation of the first Iron Man suit was a “collaborative” effort between himself and a team of Marvel employees who know the hero best.
“When we came on it was massaging those shapes into a workable place to fit over a human body,” says Mahan, who worked for 25 years with special effects legend Stan Winston.
Comic book fans may not realize that reproducing Iron Man for the big screen could yield a 10-foot tall hero. Comic illustrations tend to exaggerate size and proportions for heroic purposes.
Tell that to the die-hard “Iron Man” devotees.
“The fans are so completely, overly critical,” he says. “Your real job is to satisfy that huge contingency of fans.”
Mahan, who is currently helping bring “Thor“ feature to life, says shooting “Iron Man 2” often meant using the suit even if it wouldn’t appear in the finished scene.
Having the suit on set can guide CGI teams regarding how light bounces off it. That kind of information goes to the computer artists to render the most realistic imagery as possible, he says.
Mahan understood the gravity of his role when the first “Iron Man” was in production. It doesn’t matter how charming Downey, Jr. is as Tony Stark, “if you don’t believe the suit can actually work, that a man can fly like a jet,” none of that will matter, he says.
(Photo: Special effects expert Shane Mahan helped transfer Iron Man from the comics to the big screen./Paramount Pictures)
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