A few “Iron Man 2” updates that we thought we’d round up. But don’t get too excited. First off, Bleeding Cool has given us a sort of first look of what Don Cheadle’s War Machine character will look like in his armor via this action figure illustrated in Diamond Previews, a comics industry catalogue. It’s funny looking for sure, but it is a toy. Hopefully Cheadle looks much cooler in the final costume.
Meanwhile, the Geek Files at Coventry Telegraph have a look at Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash villain, a character that never really existed in the original comic books (though ultimately he was sort of a composite figure). So to get on track with this new character hitting screens in May 2010, Marvel Comics have released a new Iron Man vs Whiplash title. And they’ve made the character the same Russian, Ivan Vanko character that Jon Favreau and writer Justin Theroux invented for the film.
Geek Files speculate this is what Whiplash will probably look like in the final version of the film when his armor is completely done (the shots of Rourke so far have been only in partial costume with his body and face very visible; also he kinda has a mop of dreads). We suppose they’re probably right, but don’t really care. We just want “Iron Man 2” to be as engaging and entertaining as the original one.
Lastly, it’s well-known that Jon Favreau started production on “Iron Man 2” with an incomplete script and even actors like Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johansson said that two weeks out before production that they hadn’t been delivered any pages yet. That’s essentially because Favreau and Theroux, while having the skeleton of the script completed, were writing and revising as they went along.
Favreau admitted as much in the newest issue of Empire saying that even Robert Downey Jr. helped out in the writing process. “Robert is a real partner in the process. He’s been very involved in the screenplay. When he went away to do Sherlock Holmes he was still part of our creative process. Even in the first film, where he was originally a hired gun playing the role, he really stepped up to rewrite scenes — he’s a great writer, too. So we really are sharing the responsibilities.”
Downey himself talked about writing and contributing ideas. “I have fortified my belief that if I have a creative instinct about something, usually it’s not because I’ve had too much coffee or because I’m bored – it’s because I sense there’s something there. And it’s always mind-blowing when you follow a hunch and realize it’s exactly what the movie wanted.”
The great thing about “Iron Man’ is that it let Robert Downey Jr. roam free with his crazy acting hunches, but at the same time felt like it kept him on a long leash so he didn’t get too out of control. Hopefully that’s the case again, because if you tilt that performance any further South, it would probably begin to get kind of wacky.