DOWNEY My missus always says the one thing she’ll never forget is watching me watch the footage at Comic-Con. Because she said I was literally trembling with excitement and satisfaction. And then I went to go shoot “Tropic Thunder.” I was showing Ben Stiller some of the footage from Comic-Con. He just looked at me in the most matter-of-fact way and said: “That movie’s going to be a hit. O.K., let’s get back to set and rehearse this scene.” I was like, Oh. He doesn’t just say that sort of stuff. So that was really cool.

“Iron Man” was released on May 2, 2008. In its opening weekend, it grossed more than $98 million, and future Marvel movies were no longer a possibility but a certainty.

DOWNEY We were at Giorgio Baldi, which is a famous Italian joint. We had a little private room there on Friday night as the numbers came in from Paramount. And I felt like we were at a horse race and we were all betting on ourselves, and we kept betting higher. I was like, “We’re going to break 85 [million]!”

FEIGE That Monday after the opening weekend, we announced dates for “Iron Man 2,” “Thor,” “Captain America” and “Avengers.” I remember being very excited that the movie worked well enough that we could do this. We’re gonna do the plan! This is going to be a big deal. And the press did not treat it like a big deal. It was a footnote to an article about the success of the “Iron Man” opening weekend. And I went, Oh, I guess people don’t get it yet. [Laughs]

DOWNEY The real daunting thing was, oh, that’s right, we have to go do this again. We get a year break, and I stayed very busy that year, and then we had to do it again. The word “franchise” is a verb, if you ask me. You are iterating something that needs to be recreated in some way and expanded upon every time.