Now, we don’t often indulge idle speculation here at Empire, but something** Iron Man 2** director Jon Favreau said today on his Twitter feed has sparked our imagination, and could be a major reveal in terms of the plot of The Avengers movie.
Favreau retweeted a question from a follower, who asked ‘Does ‘Iron Man 2’ take place before or after Hulk movie?’ Favreau succinctly replied, ‘Before’.
Now, he may have just been pulling the leg of the imaginatively-named @ThiagoSiQueiraF, but if not, then he’s dropped a fairly big piece of news there. As you will doubtless recall, The Incredible Hulk ended with a cameo from Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, recruiting William Hurt’s General Ross in his Avengers Initiative, with a view to hunting down and stopping the fugitive Hulk.
We – along with pretty much everyone else – presumed that that meeting would take place before the events of Iron Man 2. But Favreau’s answer has turned that on its head and has seemingly validated the long-held theory that **The Avengers **movie will revolve around the super-team – including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and Nick Fury – going after Ol’ Greenskin (who may or may not be played by Edward Norton).
How this affects Iron Man 2 directly, though, we’ve no idea – does this mean that the movie will end with Stark hearing about an emerald-skinned monster on the rampage in New York? Will Bruce Banner or Thunderbolt Ross pop up in a brief cameo?
It’s over to you – go on, take a leaf out of our book and indulge in idle speculation, dammit!