Interview with Matthew Margeson, Composer of “Iron Man & His Awesome Friends”

By Pune Media On Aug 13, 2025

Disney Jr. and Disney+ have welcomed another Marvel hero into their midst with the debut of the new Iron Man and his Awesome Friends. The new series is the first preschool Iron Man series featuring a young Tony Stark (Iron Man) and his world-saving besties, Riri Williams (Ironheart) and Amadeus Cho (Iron Hulk).

The series follows the adventures (and misadventures) of the best friends and super geniuses as they work together to solve problems both big and small and protect their city. They each have their own Iron Suits that allow them to fly and give them each enhanced super-strength. In addition, Iron Man has a Nano-Shield; Ironheart has a Heartbeat Bubble forcefield to protect people, and Iron Hulk has his strong Iron Boom clap and Iron Hulk Stomp. They work out of their beachfront base under the supervision of Vision, and their furry pup, Gamma, who has her very own Iron Pup suit and accompanies the Iron Friends on many of their adventures.

I was able to sit with the composer of the series, Matthew Margeson, just ahead of the show’s debut where we talked about a lot of the inspiration for the musical scores of the new series, his past work on other Disney Jr. shows, and how a series like Iron Man and his Awesome Friends can pave the way to the viewing the MCU at large, even from a musical standpoint.

Tony Betti

I caught up with a little bit of the show. It’s a very cute, very fun show and I’ve looked at everything else you’ve done, including other Disney Jr. fare like Alice’s Wonderland Bakery and Young Jedi Adventures. But you’ve also done more mature scores like (for the purposes of this we’ll call it) “Kick-Butt” and “Kick-Butt 2″ And Kingsman everything. How would you say that you learned from those and brought to Iron Man and His Awesome Friends.

Matthew Margeson

Ohh man, excellent question. I would say that my background in more mature content gave me especially doing stuff like Kingsman and “Kick-Butt” kind of gave me a really good basis on action music and how to make it kind of accessible to people. What I’d like to think of is smart action music for listeners. Then when I started doing stuff for Disney, it was a really nice transition to be able to take that kind of accessible and that kind of Hollywood sound of high octane action music and figure out a way to tone it down and make it more accessible and less threatening for kids, but still maybe use some of the same musical devices that I was using on some of the more some of the more mature shows and movies, if that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense. You also have very cartoony, like xylophone climbs, everything like that. So you do lower it down to the Disney Jr. audience, but you still have those mature themes in there.

Yeah, it was definitely an exercise in not necessarily learning a new genre, but taking the genre that I had kind of been – I won’t say pigeonholed – but I had been used to writing and and getting a lot of work and kind of figuring out a way how to sand down the metaphorical threat and adult nature of that music to make it a little bit less threatening. Some of that was in, you know, harmonic choices and some of what you’re saying, the xylophone stuff, like just instrument choices and sonic choices to make things a little bit more friendly and less threatening for the kiddos.

I love it because it still retains the juvenile aspects of the program, but also it almost feels like some of it could fit within the MCU or something like that.

That’s our goal, yeah.

Now I kind of noticed and I might be wrong – Does each different hero (Iron Hulk, Iron Heart, Iron Man) have a different theme variation to them?

Yes. So we have our Iron Man theme and that’s Tony Stark’s theme, but it also encompasses the group as a whole. And then we have for each individual character we have, we have ironheart, we have Amadeus/Iron Hulk, they all have these little kinds of mnemonics. They’re their themes, the supporting characters. They’re not like these long extrapolated themes because most of the time they’re having short little moments. So I’ve written kind of little digestible short motifs for them, so we hear them even if only for four or five seconds and we have the space to kind of put in their sound.

Is there anything you lifted from the MCU? I know you’ve also worked on Captain America: Winter Soldier and stuff like that. Is there anything you felt you needed to bring from the more cinematic world into a Disney Jr. show like Iron Man and His Awesome Friends?

Not necessarily musical themes or anything like that, but I think once you do what I do long enough, you kind of find these little tricks. For instance, little tempos that work and key signatures that work and instruments that might work well to represent certain heroism moments or threat moments. And I think adapting those to be a little bit more kid friendly, It was a solid basis to start with.

I also need to ask what impact you had in the creation of “The Ultron Song,” which I’m sure is going to be a Spotify hit.

So “The Ultron Song,” If there’s one thing I will self-admit, I’m so terrible with songs. I’m not a songwriter, I don’t do well with lyrics so I didn’t really have a part in the creation of “The Ultron Song.” But in the episode that..

In fairness, there’s not a lot to the lyrics.

[Laughing] Right, right. But in the episode that features that song, I was able to kind of work with the songwriter and the song constantly goes in and out of score moments and the song returns almost sometimes every 5 to 10 seconds. It’s switching back between score and song. So we did have a little bit of a romp kind of figuring that out, and it was really fun. That’s one thing I love doing – working with songwriters complementing what I can’t do, and being able to kind of weave and use some of the song’s musical DNA in my score and vice versa. And I just, I love kind of getting into the weeds with that sort of task.

Speaking of working with the songwriters, you also have the Armor-Up theme which is pretty prominent in each episode. How would you use that throughout the rest of the series?

Yeah. Again, I haven’t written the Armor-Up theme but it’s something that makes an appearance I think at least once an episode and you can kind of it’s one of those things where if you watch the show long enough you know when it’s coming and you can feel it coming. So my job musically is to kind of write some of these long introductions. It’s like, oh, we can feel it coming. We can feel it coming and getting into the right key so it transitions seamlessly into that song and the right tempo, so it feels like it’s one thing, it is always like a little mathematical equation to solve. And I love kind of meddling in that stuff.

Realistically, this is going to be compared to other Disney Jr. fare, most likely to Spidey and His Amazing Friends. How would you feel this stands out compared to Spidey?

Well, it’s funny you mentioned that because when I first started working on the show, I was talking to Disney and talking Iron Man and, the question is, do we use that as a little bit of a North Pole as a compass, because it’s such a great show and it’s one of their tentpole shows. So the idea was like, no, don’t look at it. Let’s do our own thing. You know, let’s figure out what this voice is. And I would say the episodes that I have watched of Spidey, it’s an amazing show. Musically speaking, because it’s Iron Man, we really – and there’s not to say that there’s none of this in Spidey – but we rely a little bit more on rock. Like I won’t say heavy metal, but it’s a little bit more grounded in like guitary jams and drums and you can kind of see a four piece band kind of jamming along when Iron Man is defeating Ultron, you know?

I’m glad you said that because I picked up on that myself. So it kind of gives me that sweet validation. It definitely has more guitar in it and definitely more of a rock vibe. So I’m glad you mentioned that.

Yeah. Even the main theme, the theme song at the beginning that Mark Hoppus wrote, I think that was kind of a little bit of a compass or our North Star where that sound and that kind of tempo and that identity. We wanted to pull from that. So yeah, it’s definitely grounded in like a little bit of a grungy mentally rock flair.

Yeah, you mentioned Mark Hoppus. Working on the theme, did you work with him at all for the rest of the show or anything?

No, that was all done kind of before I came on board. So, no, I unfortunately didn’t have the pleasure of any input on that.

As I mentioned, this isn’t your first foray into the world of Disney Jr. but musically, it stands out. It’s vastly different, obviously, from Alice’s Wonderland Bakery or Young Jedi Adventures. But where do you hope to hear this music in the future? Like the legacy of what this show would be compared to the other Disney Jr. stuff you’ve done?

I think what we’ve accomplished in this show is doing Marvel music, like doing the music as a representation of what you would hear watching, honestly, like one of the regular Iron Man Marvel Cinematic Universe films, but the kid version of that. So that when the three to six year olds that are watching this show eventually grow up and want to watch the live action Marvel films it’s not a complete juxtaposition from what they’ve been listening to with Iron Man and his Awesome Friends. It’s a little bit of a seamless transition because we’ve kind of based it on what you would hear from a Marvel Cinematic Universe score, but just made the kid friendly version of that.

Beautiful, because these kids are gonna watch the show now and I predict it will be a tentpole like Spidey from what I’ve seen. So they’ll remember it for decades. And I think the music will help play a big part of that.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Tony!

You can now watch Iron Man and his Awesome Friends on Disney Jr. and Disney+.

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