Mickey Rourke & Sam Rockwell Joining “Iron Man 2?”

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

Conflicting reports have hit the interwebs today, although they agree that Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell are both in talks to join the cast of Jon Favreau’s Iron Man 2 as new nemeses for Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. Rockwell, a gifted actor that deserves more attention anyway, would be on board to play a ruthless tycoon rival by the name of Justin Hammer - who, in Marvel Comics, has employed more than his share of costumed goons to try to take out the Armored Avenger. The conflcit arises when trying to figure out who Rourke would be playing. Some say he will be playing a character named Whiplash, who used to go by Blacklash and specialized in having an array of cool gadget-ized coily whips. This would make sense, as Hammer often employed this guy. However, details suggesting Rourke’s character name would be a ‘tattooed Russian arms dealer named Ivan’ instead lead others to believe he’ll be putting on the armor of the Crimson Dynamo, which has been worn by many different characters, and which could lead to a more kickass armor vs. armor fight than we got with that Iron Monger climax of the first film.

As long as there’s this much information (or disinformation) floating out there, let’s add to it. They could go the Titanium Man route, which is another Russian in an armored suit, but that tends to be bulky as well, and they did that with the Iron Monger armor already. Justin Hammer has also employed several other bad guys, including Blizzard, a guy with a cool suit that gives him ice powers, as well as Boomerang, a guy with, as you might surmise, trick boomerangs. Personally, I’d love to see them involve The Ghost, a phasing saboteur with a serious mad-on against corporatization in general.

But they look like they’re set as far as villains go. We’ll just need to find out which way they’ll go. Although it’s really hard to picture Mickey Rourke as being a tech whiz of any sort. Unless, perhaps, The Wrestler is too fresh my mind.