Word Balloons: New ‘Rhodey’ dons War Machine armor
‘Iron Man 2’: Don Cheadle talks about his role in sequel

MATTHEW PRICE, Features Editor Comments 0
Published: August 7, 2009

SAN DIEGO — The War Machine armor worn by James "Rhodey” Rhodes made its debut in a film clip shown at Comic-Con International, and "Iron Man 2” co-star Don Cheadle got his first look at the armor along with 6,000-plus screaming fans.

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"It was pretty incredible,” Cheadle said of the experience. "I hadn’t seen any of the footage cut together, I didn’t know what to expect. ... And even as good as that looked, that’s still not the end result. That’s not totally finished. So it’s like, wow, it’s going to really be awesome.”

Cheadle replaces Terrence Howard as Rhodes in the "Iron Man” sequel set for next summer, but says there’s no bad blood between him and Howard about the change in roles.

"Terrance has been a friend for a while. I produced ‘Crash’ and put him in ‘Crash,’” Cheadle said at an interview at Comic-Con. "And, I was his friend before that, too, so he knew there was no beef. I didn’t snake a part from Terrance. He was cool with me.”

Cheadle said Howard was the first person to wish him good luck on the film, and by the time he came on, Howard "was already not doing the movie.”

Cheadle researched his role by checking out the comic-book history of Rhodes and War Machine. The character first appeared in the January 1979 issue of Iron Man and was created by David Michelinie and Bob Layton. Rhodes took over as Iron Man temporarily, starting with "Iron Man” No. 170 from 1983. Rhodes first donned the War Machine armor in 1992.

"I went back and looked at a lot of different (comics),” Cheadle said. "There’s so many different iterations of James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes in the comic books. It was hard to go, well, I want to be the one in 1982. It’s like, which one am I picking?”

Cheadle said he tried to go with the common denominator of Rhodes’ friendship with Tony and how it’s affected when Tony reveals to the world that he is Iron Man.

"I am in the military, and there’s a chain-of-command that I have to follow, but (Tony is) working outside of the military,” Cheadle said. "That was the strain, that was the tension that was between their relationship that drives the whole movie, for our characters.”

Cheadle said rather than try to match directly with what Howard did in the first movie, the filmmakers worked with him to create a performance that worked for the story in "Iron Man 2.”

"That’s why I liked how we kind of just dealt with it right up front, first scene, first moment that I was here on screen, say something about it and then just move on,” Cheadle said.

Cheadle said he had no trepidations about signing on to be in possible sequels or spin-offs from "Iron Man.”

"Well, what I know is that no matter what you sign, if the movie isn’t successful, it doesn’t matter how many movies we decide we were going to do, the public will say, ‘We don’t want any more,’” he said. "So, you want them to be successfulm and if they are successful, then, good, why wouldn’t you want be in more?”

"Iron Man 2” is scheduled for release May 7. The collection "Iron Man: War Machine,” available now, collects Rhodey’s first appearances in the "Iron Man” armor. War Machine appears in an ongoing series from Marvel Comics, written by Greg Pak ("World War Hulk”). The first five issues of the current "War Machine” series are collected in "War Machine: Iron Heart,” released in July.