IRON MAN 2 (2010) - PREVIEW 

THEY SAY

Now that Tony Stark has come out of the closet as Iron Man, who knows who is going to pop out of the woodwork to fight him . . .

Reports have it that Mickey Rourke plays a tattooed Russian baddie named Ivan who becomes a man with deadly, technologically enhanced coils. Another source yet insists that Rourke is going to play the Crimson Dynamo. "He's considered to be an evil version of Iron Man because he battles the superhero in a nuclear-powered suit of armor."

Rockwell would play Justin Hammer, a multibillionaire businessman and a rival of industrialist Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, being played by a returning Robert Downey Jr.

WE SAY

With a U.S. opening weekend of $98.6 million and an estimated global box office take of $200 million within less than a week, it should come as no surprise that Marvel has announced that it has green-lit Iron Man 2 for a summer 2010 release.

After all, director Jon Favreau has admitted in interviews that he had the whole Iron Man thing planned out as a trilogy. Word has it that the villain in the next movie will be the evil Mandarin mastermind.

But now that Marvel Comics has cut out the middle man by producing their own movies (which makes the $150 million budgeted Iron man one of the most expensive independently-made movies ever!), it seems that they have gone overboard!

Also announced are movie adaptations of other comic book titles such as Thor (also summer 2010) and The First Avenger: Captain America and The Avengers for summer 2011. Personally we believe that Marvel may be riding on a wave of over-optimism here. After all, Thor is probably one of the most ridiculous superheroes ever invented and is prime material for high camp. But hey – we didn’t have the second biggest opening for a nonsequel since the original Spider-man, so what do we know?