Geez, when is a guy supposed to sleep? I hit the sack last night after watching Heroes, and wake up to the earth-shattering news that Terrence Howard will not be reprising his role as Jim Rhodes in Iron Man 2! He’s been replaced by…
Don Cheadle?
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Apparently the swap is due to dollar signs. No specifics have leaked out, but Howard probably wanted more than Marvel was offering him to play the role in the sequel to the highly successful first film. It’s well known that Marvel tried to lowball director Jon Favreau for his return to the big chair for Iron Man 2. I’m sure that everyone will be getting bigger paychecks but I guess things didn’t work out with Terrence.
What’s ironic about this is that he’s been fired up since day one about expanding his role and getting to play another armored character very big in the world of Iron Man: War Machine. Even back during the 2007 Comic-Con during the roundtable interview I attended, he had a spark in his eye when the possibility of donning the silver armor was mentioned. Also, no doubt he would have had a much larger role in the sequel than he did in Iron Man.
This is a real head-scratcher and the first bit of bad news surrounding the budding franchise.
Now I was never a big fan of Terrence Howard in the role of James Rhodes – being a longtime reader of the comic book, I thought he was too soft-spoken for the role. So who do I think would have been a great “Rhodey?”
Wesley Snipes.
Yeah, yeah – he doesn’t have the acting chops of Howard, but he’s a much better match for the hard-edged, feet-on-the-ground military man that was Rhodey in the comics. He’s even the right age to match up with Robert Downey Jr.
So what about Don Cheadle? He’s a fine actor and I enjoy him in his films, but again, he doesn’t strike me as Jim Rhodes. And I just cannot picture him donning the War Machine armor.
Maybe I need to go watch his latest film Traitor to get a feel for him an a more action-adventure type of role, but right now I can’t get the character he played in Ocean’s 11, 12 & 13 out of my head.
I know that a lot of people are big fans of Terrence Howard as Tony Stark’s best friend and I think (my personal preferences notwithstanding) that switching actors is not a good thing. It’ll be jarring (at least initially) to buy into Cheadle playing Rhodes when every other character in the film wil be played by the same actors that appeared in the first one.
I mean if this becomes a trilogy, it has the possibility of hitting $1.5 BILLION worldwide in the end in box office alone, and if War Machine/Rhodes will be a pivotal character in the next film you’d think the studio could toss a few more bucks at Howard. Of course I have no idea what he’s asking for, so who knows whether it’s unreasonable or not.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
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42 Comments
As much as I like Christopher Judge because I’m a big SG-1 fan, I’m not sure how he would look at Rhodey. Seeing him talk “human” and not all proper like his Jaffa character would just be too weird… lol
@Ken J
What’s really interesting is that Judge is a total goofball off camera – always has the most gigantic smile on his face.
Vic
Yah, and that just might be a little weird as Rhodey don’t you think?
Indeed…
lol
i agree lol
I almost think he would have trouble takeing the part seriously
Thanks for the heads up. Now, I won’t waste time seeing the sequel. No offense to Don Cheadle but he is too scrawny to be anybody’s idea of a superhero. Wesley Snipes would have been a better choice in both films. There goes the neighborhood!Dang, eveh husband would make a better War Machine than Don Cheadle! I wonder if it’s too late for him to audition. LOL
I will wait for it on video now. They kept the same characters in all the othe franchises, but this one, that ruins it for me.
I think Chris Judge would be great as Rhody.
Ken J. If you’ve seen all of SG-1 then you’ve seen Teal’c act like a normal human. There was an episode of SG-1 where Teal’c was in dream half the time and the other half he was on a planet with Bra’tac sharing Teal’c symbiote because Bra’tac’s was inured. During the episode, half the time he was a fire fighter and Bra’tac was his father-in-law, and he was going to be donating a kidney to him.
Joe, I’ve seen every episode of SG-1 at least three times. I know which episode you’re talking about. My point is that I can’t see him as a normal person, when I saw that episode, I was expecting an “indeed” from him at any moment even while he was supposed to be human, lol. I’m not saying he won’t be able to do it, it’s just that my mind might not be able to accept a non-jaffa him, lol.
In respect to the comic character Jim ‘Rhodey’ Rodes — Howard was not a great choice and brought a ’softer’ persona to the silver screen then we expected. But in that same respect, Cheadle is a worse choice. Both men are great actors, neither are Jim Rhodes.
All this news of changing around characters is making me worried, Iron Man 2 has so such potential, it’s going to be a blockbuster opening obviously. Why ruin the dynamic formula that made it so great by F–ing up the continuity?
I say changing writers to a comedic writer was a mistake, I can’t see the person who wrote Tropic Thunder catching the essence of Tony Stark/Iron Man or his supporting cast in a script.
The 3-D decision makes it feel childish, to me. I don’t need things poppping out at me, I want to enjoy quality writing directing and acting — spend the money there, not on special effects that do nothing but distract us from the actual film.
I hear now that the person who played his father is changing? The films were planned a franchise, so can we actually do some… uh… planning.
Of course, some of these items are probably fodder… well that’s good.
Marvel, Jon… P-L-E-A-S-E do not ruin this film… you have my confidence despite the nonsense I’m reading.
If money made Howard leave then that’s his loss bigtime. He just took himself out of the future spotlight as a mainstream badass superhero.
Why is it that the actor is always the one to be blamed on the topic of money and not the producers? Mickey Rourke almost dropped out of IRON MAN 2, because Marvel was too cheap to pay him what he had deserved. They tried to do the same with Jon Farveau.
So, why is Terrence Howard being blamed and not Marvel?
Ken J.
I see what you’re saying. Unfortunately, since he really hasn’t had any other roles except in SG-1, its hard to imagine him doing anything else.
Did you catch Michael Shanks playing a bad-ass spy in Burn Notice?
@ Joe, no, I don’t watch Burn Notice. I know a lot of people watch it, but I can’t stand it. There’s no way to convince my mind, even trying to suspend disbelief, that the main character was ever a Navy SEAL. The dialogue and action is so cheesy, and his narrations on how to do his “spy stuff” is often very wrong, like his idea of how to defeat a motion detector in one episode for example. He said to use a thick blanket to cover yourself that absorbs sound waves so it doesn’t reflect back to the motion detector… SOUND WAVES??? Motion detectors work by infrared, they are not sonar! LMAO
Anyway, I just thought that was funny, but no, didn’t see Shanks, what episode was it? Maybe I’ll check hulu or their website to see if they’re showing it.
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