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Item published by latency on 20th March. 0 Comments.

Iron Man is a comic and cartoon I don't know a great deal about, but when the 2008 Iron Man movie hit the screens, it blew me away. It also blew Transformers six-ways to Sunday by virtue of the fact that the story wasn't riddled with cringe humour and plot holes. Transformers was awesome because it was a movie about giant fighting robots that are also cars; but Iron Man was awesome because it features mecha suits, rock and roll, decent humour and a compelling story of origin. So as you can imagine, I'm pretty stoked about Iron Man 2. I'm even more stoked because we've got another trailer to look at now.

I think the speculation on every fan's mind is who and what exactly we're seeing here- there's more information on the stuff we already knew, and a lot of new information we didn't have before. Who is this Whiplash guy? And what's going on with Tony's suitcase-suit right at the end of that trailer?

The new nemesis is certainly one of the big focal points- Whiplash is a classic reoccurring enemy of Iron Man, originally a disgruntled electrician in the employ of Stark Industries, Whiplash starts out as a guy with a whip, and joins the comic-book criminal organisation Maggia. We can clearly see that there's an organisation making a deal with Whiplash in the trailer, the man with the jet is likely to be Count Nefaria, who is the leader of Maggia during most of the Iron Man - Maggia conflicts.
Could this be the start of an ongoing source of enemies for Iron Man to fight in future movies? There's a little deviation, however, since Whiplash gets his better-known electrical whips and suit from a fellow criminal mastermind, but the IM2 trailer suggest he built this suit himself, and he's also featuring some Iron Man Arc-Generator style gizmos that Crimson Dynamo, another Marvel Comics villain, sported. So there's some mixing going on here, but it's all from original comic origins, so I think we can forgive the changes!

The other hero we're gagging to see is War Machine, the Iron Man suit worn by James Rhodes, played by Terrence Howard in Iron Man 1, but to be replaced with Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2. I don't like it when actors are changed in a sequel, but I do like Don Cheadle, so I expect all of you guys to accept this as well.
War Machine's original origins are long and complicated; I know this because I've spent the entire morning reading up on him for this article. Suffice to say, Iron Man 2 will not reflect these origins, but War Machine still represents a less eccentric, possibly less willing, but very sensible combat partner for Iron Man.
It seems that in Iron Man 2, we'll be seeing a variation of what the comics refereed to as the Armour Wars, where Iron Man had to go head to head with armour-suits based on his won designs and technology, in which case, the awesome firepower of War Machine will be needed.

We've also got the other good guys, The US Government and S.H.I.E.L.D. The trailer doesn't disclose a great deal of information on them, and since both had a very back-seat role in Iron Man 1, it's hard to predict what's going to happen in Iron Man 2. The Government was the Iron Man suit for themselves, and S.H.I.E.L.D just want the good guys to win. Both are clearly in the trailer, so we'll have to wait and see.

Finally, there's the promise of new armour fro Tony Stark. Iron Man 1 featured the Mark III armour, which is fairly accurate, but a couple of the Iron Man suits could fold down to suitcase or near-suitcase sizes, so exactly which one we're seeing is unclear. Current conjecture is that the suit we're seeing at the end of the trailed has been chalked up as the Mark V suit, but since in the film it's incorporating elements of the Silver Centurion armour, when the actual Mark V armour is red and gold, we know this is a bit of mixing once again. However, the Silver Centurion armour was the same suit used to defeat Blacklash / Whiplash in the comics, so it's got some heritage.

Consider yourselves a little more educated than before! Get a tenner out your wallets for a ticked and a snack, place it somewhere safe where you won't spend it, and sit tight until May 7th 2010!

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