Iron Man 2 plot details

Hulk. Avengers. Ant Man. Thor. Iron Man. Marvel superhero movie overload! We're just done with Iron Man and we're already hearing Jon Favreau talk of Iron Man 2, tentatively set for release on April 30, 2010. In a recent interview with Sci Fi Wire, Favreau mentioned that the film's story is still being hammered out. "The writing [on Iron Man 2] is really coming along well," Favreau said. "We've got Justin Theroux [Tropic Thunder] working on it, who [Iron Man and Tropic Thunder star Robert] Downey [Jr.] knows. He brings a real sense of fun. He's never worked in this genre before, and so he has that great newcomer's enthusiasm that I think we still share." "Pages are coming out, but it's really more of a conversation than actual writing. They are never really what they are going to be in the movie until the day you're shooting." "I'll tell you which [comic books] we're looking at very closely, not so much for story but for tone: the Matt Fraction [ones]," he said. "I haven't talked to him yet, but we want to talk to him and get him out here. The Fraction series seems to be informed as much by our movie as by what had happened with Iron Man before." So we've got a scriptwriter familiar with Robert Downey, Jr. in the mix which is fantastic. And we can guess that Matt Fraction is proving to be a valuable influence on the story. Fraction has recently been writing for Invincible Iron Man, which released at the same time as the first movie so I think we can expect some sort of tonal continuity between the two films and the comics. Favreau even admitted that for the first film he got a bunch of renowned comic book writers in the same room to figure out what would make a good Iron Man movie. Favreau wants to do Mandarin, but mentioned that he may not be the main villain in the sequel because he's having trouble figuring out how the character translates to today's world. The first film's origin was pretty easy to modernize because it seems like there's always a conflict somewhere in the world, but its a little harder to bring in a villian that was mainly created as a propaganda machine. And speaking of machines, what does Favreau think of War Machine? "I want to do it," Favreau said enthusiastically. "We're drawing War Machine. We're figuring it out. We're talking to Terrence to see if he can take some time out of his new life as a musician to be War Machine. I think Terrence and the character of Rhodey were smaller in the first movie than we had anticipated. But it does set the table very well for this character." "War Machine is fun, and, again, you look for ways to up the ante." So basically the sequel is going to be more of everything with a possible focus on Tony Stark building the Avengers with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), War Machine and possibly Mandarin. Oh yeah. And apparently its going to be in IMAX with the possibility of 3-D. Marvel really knows how to get you wanting more. Details on Iron Man 2