Sorry Howard
Lots of people are railing against Marvel Studios and Jon Favreau for replacing Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle for the upcoming Iron Man 2 film as well as The Avengers. You know what? As much as I strive for continuity in sequels, this isn’t really fazing me.
I don’t know much of Howard’s other work, but I do know that his portrayal of Jim Rhodes in Iron Man was one of the weaker aspects of the film. It wasn’t a bad portrayal by any count, but it wasn’t great and it certainly wasn’t the best interpretation of the character. So as much as I want to yell at the studio and Favreau for holding out on cash or some other reason, I have to believe that they had similar misgivings about his performance and decided to go in a different direction.
One particularly moronic guy on the Ain’t it Cool News talkback said “Empire would have been great with a replacement Han, eh?” Let’s replace 1) Empire with Dark Knight 2) would have with was 3) Han with Rachel Dawes. And then replace that question mark with a fucking period. It depends on the fucking situation moron! And I think that in this instance it might have been worth it. Obviously we’ll see, it’s always a gamble, but I’ve seen a decent amount of Cheadle’s work so I’m pretty hopeful about the whole situation.