A new Vulture report has shed more light on the behind-the-scene chaos of Iron Man 2.
According to MCU insiders, Mickey Rourke laid out several strict demands before accepting the role as villain Ivan Vanko/Whiplash, despite his unfamiliarity with the character or the Iron Man comic.
“What’s Iron Man 2? What’s Iron Man?!” he reportedly asked when he received a call about the film.
Sources say the Oscar-nominated actor agreed to meet with Marvel head Kevin Feige and Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau to discuss his possible involvement. During that sit-down, Rourke allegedly told the men he would do the project on three conditions: “I have to have my hair in a samurai bun. I have to speak in a Russian accent. And I have to have a bird on my shoulder,” he allegedly said.
Fans of the Iron Man franchise know that each of those “demands” were ultimately met; however, Rourke’s manager claims those Whiplash characteristics were not the actor’s idea.
“Simply not true,” Kimberly Hines told Insider about the reported bun, accent, and bird demands.
Hines has not publicly commented on Rourke’s purported salary request for the 2010 sequel. According to Vulture, the actor was unsatisfied with the $250,000 he was offered for the role. Sources say Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr. agreed to give up a portion of his $10 million check in order to meet Rourke’s money demands. It’s unclear how much Downey contributed.
“It was a major sum to get Mickey close, and Mickey took the deal,” an insider claimed.
Once the deal finalized, Rourke reportedly “steeped himself in Russian prison culture, researching mob tattoos and even visiting Moscow’s notorious Butyrka Prison.” But despite his deep dive, the actor allegedly started the project with “a lot of ambivalence,” and had expressed his frustration with Favreau and Marvel Studios.
Rourke spoke about the tensions during a decades-old interview with CraveOnline:
“I explained to Justin Theroux, to the writer, and to [Jon] Favreau that I wanted to bring some other layers and colours, not just make this Russian a complete murderous revenging bad guy,” he said. “And they allowed me to do that. Unfortunately, the [people] at Marvel just wanted a one-dimensional bad guy, so most of the performance ended up the floor.”
In that same interview, Rourke described MCU as the “maker of mindless comic book movies,” and suggested he had no intentions of working with the studio ever again.
“I don’t want to be a part of that,” he continued. “I don’t want to have to care so much and work so hard, and then fight them for intelligent reasoning, and just because they’re calling the shots they… You know, I didn’t work for three months on the accent and all the adjustments and go to Russia just so I could end up on the floor. Because that can make somebody say at the end of the day, oh fuck ‘em, I’m just going to mail it in. But I’m not that kind of guy. I’m never going to mail it in.”
