Robert Downey Jr. took a break from shooting The Avengers in New Mexico to take part in a Q & A session at the Hero Complex Film Festival in Hollywood last night. Here's what the actor had to say about The Avengers, heaping praise on director Joss Whedon.

"Well, I hate everybody. [Laughter] I'm not talking about the cast, I'm not talking about Joss. What I mean is I tend to look at a scene and say 'This is absolutely impossible, we can't shoot this, it's horrible. I can tell you ten other movies it's been in, I refuse.' I usually start off the morning by refusing to do what I've signed on to do. So I brought that attitude, happily. I just thought How are you gonna put all of us clowns together? He's wearing a suit, he's all jacked up, he's so and so and poor Mark Ruffalo, he's gonna out do us. And we're about six weeks in, and I have to say Joss Whedon is nailing it. He's so smart and so good. And it's gonna be great. I can't believe I just said it, I never could've believed this but it's gonna be great."

He was joined on stage by director Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr.'s director in Iron Man and Iron Man 2. Iron Man 3 will be directed by Shane Black, and Jon Favreau talked about passing the torch to this new director.

" I love the franchise and I'm a big fan of Shane's as well so hopefully I can be helpful because I want to see this thing grow and transform. And actually, when it finally landed on Shane, it was like, 'All right, that's gonna be something interesting.' Especially because it's gonna be so difficult for whoever does that one because although it's Iron Man 3, the whole Avengers thing, I guess in comics you can say that it's an individual storyline, and you can break it off into a group. But, in movies it's hard not to take into consideration what just happened. What are you gonna say? They all just lost their cell phones and you can't get help?' So it's going to take a lot of ingenuity to make it make sense to a mainstream film audience as well as a comic book audience."

Robert Downey Jr. also joked about what will be the hardest part about getting Iron Man 3 off the ground.

"The most difficult part of making Iron Man 3 is going to be negotiating Jon Favreau's acting deal."

Jon Favreau also revealed he wants his Happy Hogan character to transform into The Freak, and he wants a romantic moment with Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts.

"If The Freak isn't in it, I'm not doing it. If Happy Hogan doesn't turn into The Freak, I'm not doing it. Here's what happens to Happy Hogan, he marrys Pepper Potts. I want a love scene with Pepper Potts... with my shirt on, and I want to transform into The Freak."