Mickey Rourke IS Whiplash … Kinda

The first photo of Mickey Rourke’s character Whiplash from the upcoming “Iron Man” sequel has surfaced from Jon Favreau’s camp, and man is it … uncompelling.

First, Rourke plays a Russian dude with tattoos all over his body … slightly reminiscent of Viggo Mortensen’s character from “Eastern Promises”. His hair is long and unkempt, and in the photo he appears to be wearing orange prison pants. On top of all that, he’s got on some sort of rig over his upper body that at first glance resembles nothing so much as those orthopedic braces that some folks have to wear to help their bodies support themselves because their muscles are too weak to do the job properly.

The glowing circular chestplate is in place, presumably powering all this nonsense, and providing a link to the technology that powers the Iron Man armor. The problem is, the picture taken as a whole looks really half-assed and clunky. Now, that’s probably by design, and we’ll likely see the outfit evolve over the course of the movie, but as a first image, it lacks punch.

The other thing is, as a past fan of the Iron Man comic, I remember Whiplash as being more of a standard supervillain. He didn’t have any armor or rig, he just had those whips. And why Whiplash, anyway? There are more interesting villains in ol’ Shellhead’s rogues gallery — bring on The Mandarin (who might be in the movie already), or the Crimson Dynamo, or the Titanium Man. Keeping all of Iron Man’s foes technology-based will help keep things grounded and provide a reason for Stark to be involved. Let’s not go all crazy with superpowers until the Avengers movie comes around.