Empire recently spoke with Jon Favreau and Mickey Rourke about Iron Man 2. Favreau gave some back­ground to the Tony Stark char­ac­ter in the sequel before giv­ing cryp­tic clues when quizzed on ‘Rhodesy’ and War Machine.

“Tony’s expected to be a role model and I don’t think he’s ready to be one. He’s under a great deal of pres­sure and when you’re under pres­sure, I think you find out­lets for that. That’s one of the ten­sions of the film: it’s one thing to say you’re Iron Man, and another thing to actu­ally become Iron Man.”

“Rhodesy is def­i­nitely step­ping up in this film. Let me put it this way: Tony’s not the only per­son with tech­nol­ogy in the film.”

Mean­while, Mickey Rourke com­ments on his Whiplash suit (we’ve already seen a pos­si­ble con­cept piece for this)

“I’m hav­ing the time of my life! […] It’s been really bru­tal, because my Iron Man suit weighs 23lb. It’s sort of a half-suit, with half my skin show­ing, with lots of Russ­ian tat­toos, because [Whiplash is just] out of a Russian-zone prison.”