Neue News zu Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. hat derweil betätigt, dass das prägnante Alkoholismuskapitel aus dem Comic in zweiten Teil nicht vorkommen wird.

US, April 14, 2009 - The presence of the classic Tony Stark villain the Mandarin in the first Iron Man film was really well played -- the terrorist group in that movie, the Ten Rings, was of course a representative of the jewelry-loving comics character, only grounded in the reality of the world created by director Jon Favreau. But will an actual Mandarin character being showing up at some point in the series?

SCI FI Wire recently spoke with Faran Tahir, the actor who played the ring-twisting terrorist leader Raza in the first film. During that discussion, Tahir had some interesting things to say on the matter. For starters, he confirms that he is not in Iron Man 2 -- but says he may yet return for part three.

"We're still talking about it," Tahir tells the site. "It hasn't been finalized yet, so we'll see."

We already know that the Mandarin is meant to be the overarching villain of the film series, and yet we haven't really heard much about how he might fit into the currently shooting second film.

"Is he the conduit to Mandarin?" Tahir says of his character. "Does he become Mandarin? Is it just another leader of the Ten Rings, you know, thing? All the allusions [in] my first speech [were] all about Genghis Khan and all that, which is Mandarin's thing, you know? So I think they have created the character and the storyline very wisely. To leave it as open as possible so whatever they need to, you know, pull from, they will."

As of now, the only confirmed villains in Iron Man 2 are Mickey Rourke as Whiplash and Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer. So where is the Mandarin? Maybe JARVIS can figure it out and get back to us…

Das Charaktere im Film ausgetauscht werden, finde ich immer kritisch, da die Kontinuität immer flöten geht, aber Samuel L. Jackson ist da schon ein würdiger Ersatz.