New Iron Man 2 Interviews, Posters, Stills and More as Marvel Declares "Iron Man Month"
Posted 04.15.10 by BrentJS
Marvel Comics recently declared the month preceding the release of Iron Man 2 "Iron Man Month," with plans to feature "Shellhead" throughout April. Not to be left out, Marvel Studios has recently released two new posters and two new high-quality still images from the movie. Also, the two "Men of Iron" themselves, Don Cheadle, who plays Jim "War Machine" Rhodes, and Robert Downey Jr., who plays Tony "Iron Man" Stark, and director Jon Favreau have also been making the rounds in support of the movie, offering up details about the plot and the relationships between the characters.
First up, Marvel Studios has released two new character posters featuring the leading ladies of Iron Man 2. The first poster features Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) with the Stark Expo as a back-drop. The composition alludes to Pepper's place in Tony's life as sort of a caretaker or guardian of him and his legacy. Unfortunately, to die-hard fans, there's not much new about this poster, as this shot of Pepper has already been seen before on the official Iron Man 2 website. The second poster features every fan-boy's dream girl, the smart, attractive and butt-kickingly seductive Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). Like the Pepper Potts poster, the Black Widow's poster composition alludes to her mysterious status. Slinking in heavy shadow in the corners of a hallway, is she a friend to Iron Man or another foe? Also like the Pepper poster, however, this image is only slightly different than the Black Widow seen previously as a mini-poster at the WonderCon comic book convention.
Next, fans of Sam Rockwell finally get to see him featured in a new still from the movie. After being snubbed on both the international and domestic theatrical posters for Iron Man 2, Rockwell appears confident and deadly as Justin Hammer, a driven, "dark" version of the kind of war-mongering industrialist Stark was on his way to becoming before the events of the first movie. Whether purposely to contrast against the Justin Hammer still or purely coincidental, the second new still from the movie offers a close-up of Iron Man that is very heroic and patriotic.
The buzz word in all of the recent Iron Man 2 interviews is "relationships," with Cheadle, Downey, Jr. and Favreau all offering up insight into the relationships that help define the characters and their motivations in Iron Man 2. In the latest issue of Wizard Magazine, Cheadle said that he used the comic books as reference to help him figure out the relationship between Stark and Rhodes, which informed the way he approached portraying his character.
There's so many [comic book] stories that are generated, you're trying to figure out what are the qualities about [Rhodes] that serve this piece that you do in this movie the best.... And it just seems like the thing that was really the bedrock was their friendship. These guys are friends. And now, how do we navigate all that? That's what the movie really was about-how do they navigate this friendship in these really perilous circumstances?
In [Iron Man 2] they don't agree a lot, and it goes to a level where obviously there's a whole disagreement. It's real interesting to try and keep that all together as we're going through and really kind of charting those scenes. Well, what is the motivation here for these characters, and how can we do that and still service the Marvel world?
In the lastest issue of Men's Journal, Downey, Jr. revealed that a lot of what motivates Stark was his relationship, or lack thereof, with his deceased father, the founder of Stark Industries.
We're having Tony go back and really deal with the ramifications of his lack of connection to his dad, his almost professional-stock, prop-smile answers, and how he'd been using Dad's memory as a weapon against others. He's really feeling hugely conflicted by assumptions about his dad's feelings about him and whether or not there's any real connection between them at the most basic level, which is: You're not here anymore for this. Is there something you have for me, is there something you left for me, is there some sort of bread-crumb trail I can find that will help fill me at this point in my life?
And, Favreau recently told the L.A. Times that adding new characters into the mix helped to "shift the dynamic" of the characters in the sequel, but in a way that
avoids "multi-villainitis," which he described as "the downfall of many other superhero franchises.
I was more concerned about the interpersonal dynamic and how the presence of Natasha [aka the Black Widow] would affect Tony and Pepper, because what I didn't want to do is make this film episodic, like just another episode of a TV series. So one way to approach that is shift the dynamic with the introduction of new characters. So you have Justin Hammer inserted into the Tony-Rhodey relationship, and you have Natasha Romanoff inserted into the Tony-Pepper relationship. When done right, a superhero movie has the character's personal life mirroring what's happening in their superhero world, and sometimes you have to force things to do it. In this case, I'd say, we found an organic way to do it. We wanted both A-story and B-story to be affected by these new characters.
Finally, Funko has released an item that no self-respecting computer jockey who considers himself or herself an Iron Man fan should do without. Definitely one of the funkiest of movie tie-ins, now you can store your data inside Iron Man just the way Stark does with this Iron Man 2 USB Jump Drive.
Next Showing: Iron Man 2 opens May 7