One of the biggest and most anticipated presentations at this year’s Comic Con was that for Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man 2.” News has been abuzz all weekend with every little tidbit from every little interviews, footage or the panel itself.
The film’s presentation on Saturday unveiled the first-seen footage from the film and, among other things, revealed that the alter ego of Don Cheadle’s James Rhodes character, War Machine, does in fact make an appearance in the film. Cheadle further noted on his character’s alter-ego appearance: “War Machine makes a very impactful appearance in the movie,” he told MTV. “It’s significant.”
Three sequences were shown all up according to AICN. The first was a meeting between Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark and Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury at Randy’s Donuts. The second was set in a courtroom as Stark comes under question from Senator Stern, played by Garry Shandling, about the ownership of his weaponry. Rhodes also comes into the scene as discussion evidently become a bit heated.
The last sequence was a montage of short clips that include Mickey Rourke’s Ivan Venko/Whiplash studying Stark; Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow in combat; Rourke’s Whiplash in action at a raceway with a dejected Stark battered and bruised; more of Stark as Iron Man as the screen fades to black only to return with Cheadle and Rockwell discussing armory and concluding with the money shot of War Machine described as “black and silver and slight bulkier,” mini-gun mounted on shoulder with “bullets come streaming out of his arms, spewing spent casings as hundreds of rounds are shot off at once.”
The panel proceeded the footage’s presentation and on hand to answers all the fan’s questions and queries were Favreau, Downey Jr., Johansson, Cheadle and Rockwell.
It was revealed that Rourke’s character – a combination of the Ivan Lenko and Whiplash characters in the comics – has most of his screen time with Rockwell’s Justin Hammer. After earning the role, Rourke voluntarily went to a Russian prison for research of which Favreau only learnt about through TMZ.
The main themes of the film were noted by Cheadle to be “the idea of needing help,” “working with others,” that “no man is an island” and dealing with the “pressures of saying you’re Iron Man and being Iron Man.” While the film would not be dealing with the comic’s ‘Demon In A Bottle’ storyline on account of the fact it would be against the film’s tones, Favreau added the struggle’s of Stark would be touch on through inner-exploration.
Johansson also revealed that her character’s training involved a lot Mixed Martial Arts training while in response to replacing Terrence Howard, Cheadle said his performance based on script though he did cipher aspects of Howard’s performance while trying to make it his own.
The actors have also undertaken press interviews aplenty all weekend giving geeks yet another opportunity to question every little thing:
Regarding the franchise and story’s development: “Usually the origins story is the most interesting story because you get to see someone becoming who we love them once they are,” discussed Downey Jr. “And so, again, we just up the stakes. He has to be dealing with things that are pertinent than his immediate survival and he has to be exposed to things that are beyond the realm of easy understanding even for someone as bright as he is. And those were there so we didn’t have to reach or create anything. It’s kind of like you can’t tell a story better than the way it really happened. So we just started looking back on the stories and did an amalgam of those we didn’t take ourselves seriously at all, but we took the storytelling really, really seriously.
On whether her character Black Widow was on the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ side in the upcoming sequel: “You just have to call me a super shape-shifter, I suppose,” teased Johansson. “You’ll have to wait and see. Whose side is she fighting on? I don’t know.” Further, on the possible Russian link between her character and that of Rourke’s: “Well, you’re going to have to wait and see. That would just be giving you too much. I will say she is covert and I think she blends in.”
On the new character played by Rockwell, Justin Hammer. “He’s an arms dealer,” the actor revealed. “His a bit of like a Lex Luthor, mixed in with a little Bill Murray in ‘Kingpin’ and George C. Scott in ‘The Hustler,’ a Bernie Madoff, a little Steve Jobs you know? His an amalgam of a lot of different archetypes… and there’s a little bit of the Jeremy Piven character in ‘Entourage’… and I think it’s still developing. We don’t know what Justin Hammer is becoming.”
“It’s basically jealousy. That’s the main thing,” Rockwell added on his character’s motivations. “Yeah, he doesn’t have the same skills and I think he looks up to Tony and Tony doesn’t really want anything to do with him, so he’s going to take him down. We’ll see what ends up there on the big screen.”
Don Cheadle took to discussing the relationship between Tony Stark and James Rhodes “It is strained. I mean, you know, Rhodey is a military man who has to follow chain of command and has rules that he follows. And Tony Stark in this movie is basically a free agent. He’s out there doing whatever he wants, sitting in donuts, eating donuts, using the suit for whatever he decides to use it for so there’s a lot of tension which all of our scenes kind of explore and that turns into what is the underpinning for the whole film is: ‘What does Iron Man have to do?’ ‘How does he deal with the pressure of saying ‘Yeah, I’m Iron Man” Now what does that mean?”
“I think the fans have been punished by studios that don’t care,” assured Favreau of the sequel. “We hear [the fans], we’re working from the same material that they’re familiar with and we’re going to stick to it in certain ways and in certain ways we’re going to change it but we’re not changing it out of ignorance. We’re changing as a choice to make it interesting and maybe make it that they don’t know what to expect.”