Director Jon Favreau chuckled when asked about the character, played by Don Cheadle, shown above with Robert Downey Jr., who is back in armored-plated franchise's title role. In the movie, War Machine is codename for the gun-metal suit that was made by Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man) but then hijacked by the U.S. government and outfitted with extra firepower by Stark's conniving rival, military contract Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell).
Cheadle plays James "Rhodey" Rhodes, the Air Force lieutenant who finds himself torn between his superiors, who covet the Iron Man armor tech, and his friend Stark, who seems to be increasingly erratic as his celebrity and hubris surge with his heroic exploits. War Machine has been a character in the pages of Marvel Comics since 1979 and director Jon Favreau said he was the obvious choice for the sequel because as a second Iron Man of sorts he allows the film it live up to the double meaning of its title.
"The conversation was 'How do you expand what's there, how do you make the sequel bigger and better?' and one is way is, in essece, doubling up on Iron Man," the director said. "War Machine let's you do that."
There's a scene in the film where Rockwell lays out more than a half-dozen weapons of different sizes and asks which one Rhodey wants to appended to the purloined Stark armor. "I'll take it...all of them," the military officer says. That full arsenal approach makes Favreau chuckle when he recounts the scene.
"The fun part is the ridiculousness of it -- just how many guns can you put on this thing? That's the fun part of this character. With the movie we make this effort to make everything emotionally correct but you alos really want to cut loose and have fun in the places where it seems consistent to the story we're telling. And with the design and fighting style of War Machine we really went to town. He's packed with firepower and we let the [effects team] at ILM off the leash with the intensity of the destruction. The result is...high caliber."