I
debated over whether to do a Favorite Characters or a Character Highlight here. In the end, a) with Marvel, there’s always
room in my heart for more, and b) I really do love Rhodey. Took the MCU a while to get him there for me,
but now, I always enjoy him (Rhodey-related spoilers.)
I feel
a little bad, because I seem to bag on Terrence Howard every time I bring up
Rhodey, but it’s true: Rhodey 2.0 works
for me so much more than Rhodey 1.0. I
like Howard fine as an actor (although I definitely prefer Don Cheadle
overall,) but he just didn’t click for me in the role the way Cheadle does. And to be fair, sometimes that just happens –
while I’d generally pick Edward Norton over Mark Ruffalo, Ruffalo is easily the
better Bruce for me. And to be even
fairer, some of it is the acting, but some of it is the writing, too. In the first Iron Man, the phrase that continually comes to mind re: Rhodey is “butt monkey.” He’s Tony’s uptight friend who’s always on
the receiving end of Tony’s ribbing, who’s forever thwarted in his attempts to
keep Tony in some sort of line. I can
practically hear the sad trombone music following him around.
And in Iron Man 2 and beyond, that’s not who
Rhodey is. I’m not even quite sure how
to describe it, because superficially, the two versions of the character aren’t
hugely different. There’s still a lot of
comic relief at Rhodey’s expense – like his Hammer weaponry fizzling out during
the final fight in Iron Man 2, the
insurgents he’s holding at gunfight snickering at him when he admits his
password (“warmachinerox”) to Tony in Iron Man 3, the Avengers not being impressed with his tank story in Age of Ultron – but it feels
different. For whatever reason,
Cheadle’s Rhodey has more of a backbone than Howard’s, and he’s more likely to
roll his eyes and go, “Are you kidding me?” than anything else when this stuff
happens. The humor around Cheadle’s
Rhodey usually makes me laugh, while Howard’s often makes me cringe on his
behalf, and a lot of that is down to how the two version of Rhodey react to
what’s going on.
But
enough of all that. What else do I want
to say about Rhodey? I like that he’s a
purely non-super hero, and not even a nonpowered person with incredible genius
like Tony or an insane, dark, spy-training backstory like Natasha. I mean, he’s an army colonel, and he got
where he is for a reason, but he’s still an ordinary, if very competent, person
stepping into this comic-book world. As
a result, he’s not at the same level
as Tony or Cap or Thor. He’s very much a
man in a suit, but he’s a brave one, and he often holds his own even when the
odds are a lot bigger than he is. I like
that, despite the War Machine suit getting hijacked in Iron Man 2, he still does everything he possibly can to help Tony,
keeping radio contact and warning him of impending attack. I love
his save of President Ellis in Iron Man 3,
jumping into all that chaos without a suit and just doing what needs to be
done. In the midst of all that’s going
on with Tony, Pepper, Killian, and the zillion Iron Man suits in that fight,
it’s a terrific moment that’s all about Rhodey.
No comments:
Post a Comment