Iron Man 2 Trailer

Via Ace of Spades.

Mickey O’Rourke plays Whiplash, who is one of my favorite Iron Man villains. He had a strong personality and over the years he kept reinventing himself with new weapons, new costumes, and at one point a new name (Blacklash).

That’s something I liked about the Iron Man comic book. Other heroes had a set of powers and abilities that never really changed. That always seemed like suicide. Eventually their enemies would upgrade their weapons, try a different approach, team up with other villains, or just plain get lucky one day and it would be curtains for our hero. Tony Stark on the other hand was constantly upgrading his armor to keep one step ahead of the bad guys and to learn from past mistakes. Iron Man villains had to stay on the same Red Queen treadmill to keep up.

Dave Campbell likes to say that a superhero is only as good as his supervillains. Going back and reading back issues of Iron Man old metalhead was clearly lacking in the capable villains department. Here’s a guy with armor, superstrength, repulsors, flight, and dozens of electronic tricks he can mentally reprogram on the fly. A villain with a cool gun and a set of shiny leotards ain’t much of a challenge for a guy like that. The movies are showing good judgment in showcasing the more credible Iron Man villains.

P.S. War Machine (Jim Rhodes) is in the new pic, too, played by Don Cheadle.

P.P.S. Scarlett Johansson plays Black Widow. I tend to think of Black Widow as being part of Spider Man and Daredevil story lines, but she’s Iron Man’s love interest in “The Ultimates.”