Iron Man 2 Panel – Comic-Con 2009

At what I believe is one of the most anticipated panels at Comic-Con, we had Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johannson on stage for the first sneak peek at Iron Man 2.

The crowed went nuts when Favreau came in. He said it started here, no one cared about Iron Man before they got here. He went right into a promotional reel that showed some behind the scenes shots. Robert Downey Jr. walked in and the crowd came to its feet.

He was ragging on Favreau on Feige for not showing some GOOD footage – and they all played it up.

It’s Favreau’s son’s 8th birthday and RDJ led the crowd in a rendition of Happy Birthday.

Cut to footage…

[Eyes wide open, jaw hanging down, cheering]

After footage… Oh… My.

They’re going to hit it out of the park again, folks. The Iron Man 2 footage included Tony Stark being questioned by a Senate committee. He was total snark – they wanted the armor but he said he’s one with the armor so they would have to take him as well and that would “be the equivalent of indentured servitude or prostitiution, depending on what state you’re in.” He also said they should be thanking him because he “privatized world peace.”

There was a flurry of different footage including:

• Mickey Rourke building the Whiplash suit and power core.
• Stark on the top of that donut shop in with the giant donut we’ve seen in the previous image – he meets with Sam Jackson as Fury in that same scene.
• Rourke as Whiplash in that initial scene at the raceway with his electrified whips (with a really cool lightning effect).
• Iron Man dodging incoming fire at night in an apparent attempt at flying towards either the Capital building or the White House (happened too fast, not sure which).
• Scarlett as Black Widow kicking some bad guy butt in a hallway.
• Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer working out a weapons deal with Jim Rhodes.
• Introduction of Cheadle as Rhodey – I’m sorry but he instantly brought a sense of gravitas to the role with his very first word that I didn’t see at all with Howard.
• Oh, and a final shot of Rhodey in the War Machine armor tearing it up, standing on the ground, firing weapons out the wazoo in a circular pattern.

Scarlett had dyed her hair red when she showed up to meet Favreau for the part. She worked super hard to be able to do as much of her own stunts/fighting as possible.

Mickey Rourke plays an Ivan Venko/Whiplash amalgam (two villains from the comics). Favreau said that the Whiplash outfit is Ivan’s first attempt at the technology (Crimson Dynamo by the end of the film?). He mentioned

Favreau said that this film shows how Tony is handling the dual role of being himself and Iron Man and the stresses associated with that (when asked about the Demon in a Bottle storyline).

A question was asked about showing some love to highly regarded Iron Man artist Bob Layton, and Favreau called him up to the stage as he was sitting in the front row. Layton said he was invited to the set a couple of weeks ago and was treated like royalty, and thinks this film will blow the first one away.