Strange Machinations: Stories For War Machine To Avoid In 'Iron Man 2' And Beyond

by Caleb Goellner


Like many supporting characters who've risen to starring roles, James Rhodes has sometimes struggled to step out of the shadow of Tony Stark. Thanks to the cinematic success of the Iron Man movie franchise, however, Rhodes is on track to become one of the most talked-about heroes of 2010 as he prepares to don the War Machine armor in "Iron Man 2."

In the spirit of ensuring War Machine's longterm cinematic success, there are a few things to be learned from his comic book history. After all, a lot can happen to a guy over 30 years — not all of it awesome.

Read on for a brief rundown of a few landmines worth skipping over for the sake of story sanity, viewer accessibility and just plain Don Cheadle admiration.

IRON STAND-IN
James Rhodes is his own man, and while he stepped up to the plate as Iron Man during Stark's "Demon In a Bottle" days, this stepping stone doesn't really seem necessary in "Iron Man 2."

He may use some Stark tech as a springboard to superheroics, but Rhodes is a rich enough character to skip the sidekick routine this time around.

ALIEN ARMOR
After losing his War Machine armor in a battle with time-traveling Nazis (seriously), Rhodes gets hooked up with a less-than stylish alien outfit from a race called the Eidolons. Meanwhile, Tony becomes a time-displaced teenager, gets killed and ends up tossed into another dimension.

While he's gone, Rhodes sacrifices his alien duds to keep Stark Industries' new ownership from stealing the Iron Man tech and then retires from being War Machine to... You know what? It's probably just a good idea to skip anything that went down in War Machine's life during a lot of the '90s.

SENTINEL SQUAD
A few years back, when most of Marvel's mutant population lost their powers, S.H.I.E.L.D. put Rhodes in charge of a team of repurposed, human-piloted sentinel robots who help the X-Men out on occasion, punch dinosaurs and fight Black Panther.

While some of these storylines worked okay in the context of Marvel's timeline, given the studio separation of the X-Men and Avengers-related properties, this setup doesn't seem very likely or logical.

CYBORGNESS
Having been gravely injured during the events of "Secret Invasion," Rhodes is revealed to be more man than machine.

While he's continued to heroically protect the Earth from alien invaders, unstoppable robots and other threats, Don Cheadle is just too handsome to roboticize. It's really just that simple.

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