Remember how the primary problem with Iron Man 2 was that there were too many villains clogging up the works, and how we've hoped over and over again that Iron Man 3 director Shane Black would learn from that mistake and trim down the story for the third time? Believe it or not, all that hoping may not have worked. Deadline reports that James Badge Dale, the character actor known for roles on TV's The Pacific and in The Departed, is in negotiations to play Savin, a villain in the film.
There are no more details about the character or how he'll fit into the story, but as usual, the internet provides some more answers-- in the Marvel Universe there's a character named Eric Savin, a Lieutenant Colonel in charge of a secret Army project who investigates wrongdoing within the program, runs over a land mine, and is revived as a cyborg known as Coldblood. The idea of a character who works in tech fits in with the hints of what we know about the plot, namely that it will follow the Extremis story line from the comics, in which a virus is spread through the use of nanobots. But Guy Pearce is already close to signing on as Aldrich Killian, the scientist responsible for reinventing the nanobots, so how would Savin's work fit into that?
There's no telling how closely the character might relate to the one in the comics, though, so all speculation would be just that. And it's entirely possible that Pearce and Badge Dale will fit into the background just fine as Ben Kingsley's primary villain character takes center stage. But I'm getting more and more worried about a Justin Hammer-like situation, in which a great villain is thrown into the film but totally overshadowed when there's too much going on. Anyone else out there share my fears?
