I watched Iron Man again over the weekend (looking glorious on Blu-ray) and I have to admit a moment of disappointment when Terrence Howard gazed longingly at the Mark II armor and declared, “next time.” If you’ve been following along with this story, there won’t be a next time for Howard, who has been replaced for Iron Man’s sequel.
The reason given for Howard’s replacement appeared in a previous episode of Entertainment Weekly, and it basically boiled down to the actor being overpaid and difficult to work with - so difficult, in fact, that they were reducing his part in the sequel, resulting in him being even more overpaid for the quantity of work he was being asked to do. The result: get rid of the actor and keep the part beefed up.
There’s been a little bit of contention with that official story (remember, this isn’t rumor - it appeared in print, and print is always more reliable than the Internet, right?). The latest conflicting report with that story comes from screenwriter Justin Theroux, who says the part of Rhodey wasn’t changed in the screenplay for the sequel. All that stuff that was in the ‘EW’ article,” Theroux told MTV, “I don’t know. I can only tell you what I know which is that from a writing standpoint we didn’t do anything differently [with the character]. It’s not like we were sitting there going, we need less of this or that. We just approached the characters and the story on their own terms.” It sounds like Theroux wasn’t involved with any choice to reduce the role, if that ever was the case.
So what can we expect for the character, now being played by Don Cheadle? Theroux isn’t open to say. ”I can’t really speak to the plot stuff and all the rest of it but Rhodes is completely present in a very strong and big way. He’s COMPLETELY present.” That’s great to hear, if a little disappointing not to have Howard in the role, who was so perfect a fit. It sounds like it really will be “next time” for the character, just not for the actor playing him, and we may never know the real reason why.
