Reports from the set of Iron Man 3 indicate that an armor resembling Norman Osborn’s Iron Patriot suit are set to appear. Moreover, the suit’s pilot is reportedly not Norm-O, but Eric Savin aka Coldblood-7 (last seen unconscious on the battlefield during the Civil War crossover.) Aside from the obviously cool visual of a Fourth of July Iron Man suit, though, I find myself wondering why they wouldn’t create a new charater for the movie. Or, even better, why not use the similar Detroit Steel, who holds the double benefit of being both active in the current-day Marvel Universe AND actually being an Iron Man foe, unlike Osborn or Savin.
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) smells just as sweet, asking: Where’s the up-side in shoehorning characters into a movie that very few people (even those INTO comics) are going to be familiar with?
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I’m holding on to hope that this is more of a sight gag than anything and it won’t be a prominent character in the movie.
The obvious answer is that using an unknown character allows them to do what they want without incurring the wrath of the fans. For example, if they’d given J. Jonah Jameson an afro in the spidey movies instead of a flattop, the anger of the fans would have been unstoppable and I’ll bet the movies would have tanked. By contrast, if they make the villain Batroc the Leaper, or some other unknown, nobody will care if the character doesn’t resemble the comic book version.
Most comic book characters have awful names. I’m totally fine with them changing the names, origin, race, etc. of any character. I just want a good story with a sense of danger.
The upside? Fans can’t see the plot-lines coming a mile away, other then that no idea…
My guess is that it’s Rhodes armor getting commandeered by the army, which will probably serve as the reason he wasn’t in the Avengers movie.
I think others hit the nail with the reason being mostly that they could do something new or add a twist that most hardcore fans either wouldn’t expect or at least wouldn’t send them into a rage.
With licensed properties, it tends to be a use-it-or-lose-it situation, which is why X3 was flooded with named characters who barely represented the source inspiration… putting Psylocke in (in name only) extends the right to use the character at a later date.
However, for Marvel Studios, as they already own the rights, I’m not sure. I suppose one reason to to prevent running afoul anyone else’s IP (don’t create a new character only to find out it potentially infringes on someone else’s obscure character) and possibly to preserve your existing IP for a future date… in other words, while they might agree that Detroit Steel is a better fit, they might think they’re not ready for it and want to do a dedicated Detroit Steel film in the future, so in the meantime they use a no-name (that they own) as a placeholder for the story they want to shoehorn in.