Robert Downey Jr. has revealed that he was blinded by the original 2008 Iron Man helmet. The actor and director Jon Favreau had no idea that they were about to make comic book movie history and launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe when they were making it. The whole thing came as a complete surprise and helped Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige achieve his goal of bringing more characters from the page to the big screen.

While Iron Man proved to be a major success, it was a bit difficult on the set at times for Robert Downey Jr. In a new interview with David Letterman, he discussed some of those difficulties that were fixed in later installments, leading up to last year's Avengers: Endgame, which is currently the highest grossing movie of all time. Downey Jr. had this to say about the original Iron Man helmet.

"Initially, everything was really there. They wanted to spend as little as they could on CG replacement, so I remember this helmet went on, and there'd be a shot, and I'd be in this whole suit, and they'd say: 'All right, Robert, it's like you landed on the roof, so when we say action, just go like that, like you just landed, and then start moving forward.' So I put this helmet on, and it slammed closed, and I couldn't see anything, and then these LED lights went on and it was like The Manchurian Candidate... I was absolutely blinded."

As it turns out, a lot more of the Iron Man helmet in the MCU was done with CGI. "By the time we were doing the last Avengers, they'd just be like, 'Hey, Robert, would you mind putting on-' 'Helmet?! No! Yes, no. Put two dots here, and then you can paint it in later.'" Whatever the case may be, it certainly worked out well for the actor and his performance, along with all of the rest of the characters who had to work with their own motion capture dots.

Josh Brolin's Thanos is a CGI creation, as he looked far from menacing on the set of Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame as he walked around in a motion capture suit. The same can be said for Mark Ruffalo's Hulk. However, the special effects in the movies have been praised by many in the industry for being groundbreaking. While Brolin and Ruffalo had to get all of those movements down, the special effects do not take away from their performances.

Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark did not make it out of Avengers: Endgame alive. It was a heartbreaking moment for longtime MCU and comic book fans, even though they mostly knew that the actor was done with the character. Downey Jr. and Chris Evans decided to leave the party before they were asked, which leaves the future of those characters wide open. With that being said, it seems like some of the hardships behind-the-scenes were all worth it in the end. You can check out a clip of the new interview with Robert Downey Jr. above, thanks to the Netflix is a Joke YouTube channel.