The fantastic book “MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios” has been out for a bit now and we’re still finding fascinating tidbits and details within those pages. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you pick up a copy for yourself because as much fun as it is to single out little fun details, reading them in context against the backdrop of just how Marvel Studios became the powerhouse they are is even more fulfilling.
Today we’re going to focus on a little bit of Robert Downey Jr. lore involving a particularly odd request from him about the kind of tech Tony Stark uses. You may or may not have noticed, but when Tony Stark is typing anything up (usually via some fancy digital interface) it’s not using a typical keyboard. Mr. Stark’s keyboard has a bunch of seemingly random symbols. Those symbols are Mayan, which is what Downey insisted upon in the very first “Iron Man” movie and they continued to appear throughout the MCU.
Why make this demand? He never fully said why, but Downey has been known to speak about his catch-all sense of spirituality in the past. He takes a little bit from one faith and a little from another, saying in 2004 that he’s dabbled in everything from Hare Krishna and Catholicism, but he sees himself more as a “Jew-Bu” now, his term for a Jewish-Buddhist.
His respect for, and knowledge of, all sorts of mysticism could very well be at the heart of the demand, or he could have just wanted Tony Stark to seem even more eccentric than he already was.
Translating the unusual request to the screenMarvel StudiosEither way, once the decision was made to go with the Mayan language symbols, it was up to Visual Designer Ryan Meinerding to execute the design for both physical props and what a digital counterpart would look like.
He incorporated those Mayan glyphs as well as a unique set of pictograms that borrowed from symbols used by electrical engineers to create something wholly new and fitting for a next-level tech genius like Tony Stark. That man isn’t going to be happy using only the standard QWERTY keyboard! No, he’s going to develop something that works as fast as his brain and might only be usable by the man who invented it.
At the end of the day, it was a good call by Downey. It fits his character and while most people might not notice the detail, it does read on screen as future-y tech, so even if they don’t understand the mysticism nod or the electrical engineering symbols at play, it reads as a fitting piece of tech for someone like Stark.
As a funny aside, apparently Meinerding’s attention to detail was so accurate that animatic editor Jim Rothwell joked that if “the ancient Mayan tongue ever became a living language again, Apple would just lift Meinerding’s design.” Those little touches are what make me fall in love with the magic of the movies, so thanks to Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards for digging up these details for their book.
