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Potential Villain Hierarchy & Iron Patriot Armor Details for 'Iron Man 3'

by Ethan Anderton
May 30, 2012
Source: Latino Review, Superhero Hype

Now that Iron Man 3 is in production in North Carolina, there's going to be a lot of scoops coming out of the woodwork about the story, villains and more. We've already learned that Jon Favreau is returning as Happy Hogan and apparently another villain has been added to the mix in the form of Ashley Hamilton playing Firepower, with Ben Kingsley playing some sort of unknown villain (that is reportedly not Mandarin) and James Badge Dale as Eric Savin who may or may not be another villain called Coldblood. But now we have word on the actual villain hierarchy, and also on just what one of them might be wearing.

All right, now this is all a bit complicated, but some of the thoughts we've had previously about how the Extremis storyline and some of these villains (who aren't part of that comic book story on which this script is loosely based) might all tie together seem to be true. Latino Review is saying that Kingsley will be playing Mandarin, however, he is not exactly the main villain, and is more of the instigator of chaos by backing Aldrich Killian, the role played by Guy Pearce, who uses Mandarin's resources to create the new breed of nanotechnology equipped super soldiers (that's the Extremis storyline). But what about those other two villains? Be aware that there might be some spoilers from here on out, so keep reading at your own risk.

Well, as we hypothesized, it seems that James Badge Dale and Ashley Hamilton will play two of these new super soldiers. In fact, this has been confirmed by SuperheroHype learning that the Iron Patriot armor (read about the comic mythology behind that right here) makes an appearance in Iron Man 3. Moreover, The Superficial has snagged a blurry shot of the armor on set, and revealed that it's actually James Badge Dale under the armor, which seems to have some War Machine traits as well  (which isn't surprising since that's what the government wanted to do with the suit in Iron Man 2). So with that information, it seems pretty clear that Coldblood and Firepower will likely be secondary villains doing Mandarin and Killian's dirty work to fight Tony Stark as Iron Man, but not very similar to their comic book iterations at all.

Now, most of this is speculation, but with information coming from Latino Review, we think this villain hierarchy has been figured out pretty well. In fact, these guys actually got word on Loki being the villain in The Avengers (which was denied by Marvel and Tom Hiddleston) and they also heard about Thanos being involved somehow way back before anyone had heard rumors about the end credits scene. Obviously they have a pretty solid source in the know, so we're going to trust what they say for now. The villain situation seemed crowded at first, but it sounds like Shane Black has everything in check, and this might be a set-up for something bigger with Mandarin for another sequel, or maybe even for The Avengers 2. Stay tuned.

Filed under Development, Movie News, Rumors

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