What with Comic-con and all there’s a lot of Iron Man 2 news float­ing about; we’ve got new offi­cially released pic­tures of Scar­lett Johans­son as the Black Widow, Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, Don Chea­dle as Rhodey and Sam Rock­well as Justin Hammer.

The first trailer for the offi­cial Iron Man 2 video game has turned up, although don’t expect to see any movie footage or plot arc secrets; the video game is based upon a wholly dif­fer­ent storyline.

This brand-new tale takes gamers deeper into the world of Iron Man, adding to the excite­ment of the upcom­ing Mar­vel Stu­dios film. Iron Man 2 offers fans a chance to play against epic ene­mies not found in the film of the same name, such as the unfor­get­table Crim­son Dynamo. In the game’s orig­i­nal story, Tony Stark has gifted the world with new tech­nol­ogy in order to make it a bet­ter place. His phil­an­thropic nature isn’t enough to keep evil at bay, how­ever, as Iron Man’s ene­mies have crafted their own devi­ous designs based on the tech­nol­ogy. Ulti­mately, Iron Man will face epic bat­tles against huge ene­mies, as the fate of the world is left in his pow­er­ful hands.

We’ve seen Tony Stark and Whiplash in Iron Man 2, now’s our first look at the next major new char­ac­ter, the Black Widow (also known as the Russ­ian spy Natasha Romanoff), played by Scar­lett Johans­son. These shots come cour­te­ous of EW and Leroy.

Plot details

The arti­cle also offers up some very inter­est­ing plot details.

As we already know, Sam Rock­well is play­ing the weapons man­u­fac­turer Justin Ham­mer, “who fan­cies him­self the next Tony Stark”. Rourke plays the new vil­lain Whiplash, aka Russ­ian crim­i­nal Vanko — Vanko cre­ates his first suit whilst impris­oned, his final suit fires “dev­as­tat­ing, whip-like beams.”

Whiplash and Ham­mer join forces to take on Iron Man. Mean­while Natasha Romanoff is hired as Stark’s assis­tant (to replace Pep­per Potts, now CEO of Stark Indus­tries). This ulti­mately leads to roman­tic tensions.

Rourke also reveals that his char­ac­ter enjoys talk­ing to a cock­a­too whilst drunk.

Via Jon Favreau’s twit­ter feed and “Road & Track”, we’ve got a pic­ture of Tony Stark’s Grand prix racer. This will form part of the Monaco action scene, which pre­sum­ably also fea­tures Whiplash (Mickey Rourke). We’ve pre­vi­ously seen set pic­tures from Downey Stu­dios, Cal­i­for­nia, which show a replica Monaco race­track being built. Astute fans have also noticed the shape of the Mon­cao GP track on Tony Stark’s com­puter screen in the first offi­cially released Iron Man 2 image.

RT @ironmanarmory: @Jon_Favreau I see Road & Track has pics up of Stark’s GP racer. http://​bit​.ly/​S​a​3Qh

There’s really noth­ing much to this new Iron Man poster, but here goes:

Attack of the show co-host Olivia Munn made it known, via Twit­ter, that she would have a role in Iron Man 2 — though couldn’t legally dis­cuss it yet. On Twit­ter she sug­gested her role was big­ger than a one minute appear­ance, watch “Big Stan” for details.

@awalker2334 thx! im excited. @jonfavreau is awe­some! http://​www​.vari​ety​.com/​a​rti…

@tr1gun it is def­i­nitely a big­ger role than “big stan”..

Before jok­ing,

@JammedHands haha.. yes, spoiler. I am play­ing the role of War Machine in Iron Man 2. Ter­rance Howard, Don Chea­dle and now Olivia Munn! ha!

Fol­low Olivia Munn
Fol­low Movie Chronicles

Chief Mar­vel edi­tor, Joe Que­sada, has answered some more ques­tion on the reg­u­lar Cup ‘O Joe col­umn, this time per­tain­ing to Thor and Iron Man 2.

On Thor

Que­sada talks with great pas­sion about Branagh and Kevin Feige’s cre­ative part­ner­ship, and the delight it was to watch them explore the Thor ideas and mythol­ogy. His approach to the Thor fran­chise is Shake­spearean, explain­ing emo­tions between char­ac­ters in each scene, their moti­va­tion and how it relates to the movie’s plot.

Char­ac­ter devel­op­ment looks like it shall play a sig­nif­i­cant part in the Thor adap­ta­tion, Que­sada describes this qual­ity as “quin­tes­sen­tial” in cre­at­ing a Mar­vel movie. There are capes and big ham­mers, but, “It’s about what makes char­ac­ters tick”. And Que­sada adds, “there’s rea­sons and moti­va­tions for him to hit peo­ple with his ham­mer… hard!”

When it comes to mar­ket­ing Thor, it’s all about rais­ing aware­ness before the movie’s release. Sim­i­lar to the Iron Man approach, Thor’s char­ac­ter shall be intro­duced to kids through ani­ma­tion, in par­tic­u­lar in “Super Hero Squad” and “Avengers Animated”.

On Iron Man 2

Que­sada describes Favreau as intense and cere­bral, and is again happy to relay the director’s under­stand­ing and pas­sion for the Tony Stark char­ac­ter, “Why put on the suit?”. Favreau’s approach is about hav­ing the world’s most pow­er­ful weapon and mak­ing the story big­ger, all the while keep­ing it “stream­lined” and ulti­mately main­tain­ing that much needed rel­e­vance at the per­sonal level.

Here’s Mickey Rourke in full Whiplash cos­tume. Click the image for a high res version.

Whiplash (Mickey Rourke) sports a power pack on his chest that looks sim­i­lar to the one that Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) uses.

“The tech­nolo­gies are def­i­nitely related,” says direc­tor Jon Favreau. “That’s part of the core theme of the film.”

The villain’s alter ego, Ivan Vanko, is a Russ­ian who “has con­structed his own ver­sion of a suit,” Favreau says. Among the cre­ative inno­va­tions: a pair of whips, pow­ered by the suit’s glow­ing chest piece, that are expected to keep Iron Man cracking.

This first image of the char­ac­ter shows Whiplash mak­ing an appear­ance at the Monaco His­toric Grand Prix. Favreau as usual is tight-lipped about plot points and declines to dis­cuss whether the big-screen Whiplash is, as in the Mar­vel Comics, a weapons designer who works for Justin Ham­mer (Sam Rock­well), a com­peti­tor of Tony Stark/Iron Man.

“We like to play into and against the expec­ta­tions that peo­ple might have, so we mixed it up a bit,” Favreau says.

Rourke’s per­for­mances in Sin City and The Wrestler helped con­vince the direc­tor that the actor was the best can­di­date to face Downey in his sequel to last spring’s block­buster that grossed $318.4 million.

“It was very impor­tant that the vil­lain be as com­pelling as can be. … Once I thought of Mickey in that role, it made me under­stand how to shape the story.”

(Thanks Leroy!)