Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to give you the full rundown of the IRON MAN 2 panel at Comic-Con!

Footage description: Kevin Feige is brought out. Keep the tone. Brought out Favreau. Footage first. Looks like a shitty DVD extra, something a step above what Kenny Powers put together to show off his arm for baseball talent scouts. Just some greenscreen stuff. Downey comes out. “Fuck that! What was that? Unadulterated garbage. You showed me better stuff in the editing room!”

Feige tryies to step in. “No, no this is bullshit!” The crowd is cheering, knowing what’s coming. Turns out that Favreau is a little distracted. It’s his son Max’s 8th birthday… Downey leads audience in Happy Birthday, singing like an Italian waiter, ending with him saying “You better show some real footage.”

And so he did.

It opens with Downey eating a donut in the donut hole of Randy’s donuts, completely in suit except for his helmet, which is off. He’s wearing sunglasses and just chilling. Suddenly “Sir! I’m gonna have to ask you to exit the donut.” is called from the ground and the camera pulls back revealing the back of a bald head with an eye-patch strap. Yep, Sam Jackson as Nick Fury.

The next scene we’re in Randy’s donuts, eating and drinking coffee together, like two normal people… except one is Nick Fury and the other is Iron Man, in full suit (minus helmet). Downey makes a crack about turning his patchy eye away from him.

The next scene is Downey sitting in a Senate hearing being grilled by Gary Shandling’s Senator Stern, who is trying to get the Iron Man tech. “Do you or do you not possess a specialized weapon?”

Downey responds that he doesn’t. It’s a “high tech prosthesis,” and says that he is Iron Man, the suit and him and one and the same and he will not hand his tech over to the government. That would be akin to indentured servitude or prostitution… which, the senators might be familiar with.

Rhodes is brought out and Cheadle is playing him stoic, but still beholden to his country. Stark makes a big speech, playing to the crowd, who eats it up, saying that Iron Man is a nuclear deterrent and peace has been achieved just by his presence. He throws up a peace sign to many cheers and really pisses Gary Shandling off. He screams out “Fuck you, Mr. Stark! Fuck you, buddy!” Of course it looks like a feed from C-SPAN or CNN and the f-bombs are bleeped out. Stark blows him a kiss as he puts his glasses on.

Next we see a series of Tony Stark articles as Mickey Rourke studies him. We can barely tell it’s him, he’s only shown in shadow as he tries to mimic Stark’s technology.

Then it’s Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow fighting in a bright hallway. This got a ton of cheers. She looks great in the role and put the beat-down on a few poor souls.

Rourke’s attack at the racetrack comes up next and it looks fantastic. We see the armature suit and the electric whips tearing up concrete he walks among car debris, approaching a downed Tony Stark (out of costume) who is disoriented and bleeding.

We get a glimpse of Stark opening his shirt and what looked like an infection spreading out from his RT Unit, like black veins before we see a money shot of Iron Man avoiding flack in a night sky, looking sharp as hell as he plummets to Earth.

Then IRON MAN 2 with BLACK SABBATH running on in the background… but that’s not all… The footage faded to black and then fades up again in a warehouse as Rhodes stands in front of a clutter of silver suit parts. Sam Rockwell strolls in, totally cocksure and slick.

Rockwell shows off a series of guns, hand-held machine guns, shotguns and a massive mini-gun like Schwarzenegger used in T2. Rockwell asks what all the guns are for. Rhodey says “It’s classified.” Rockwell asks which of the guns Rhodey wants. “All of them.”

Then the big, big money shot.

WAR MACHINE, black and silver and slightly bulkier than the IRON MAN suit, in action. The mini-gun is mounted on his shoulder, twisting and firing as War Machine’s arms are out. Instead of repulsor rays, bullets come streaming out of his arms, spewing spent casings as hundreds of rounds are shot off at once.

It was beautiful, actually. It’s a night war scene, lit by fire and and the light of his guns firing. The crowd went apeshit.

Panel tidbits:

- Scarlett dyed her hair red before she got the part, which Favreau thought showed a lot of commitment.

- Most of Mickey Rourke’s scenes are with Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell)

- Mickey went to a Russian prison (voluntarily) after he heard his character spent time in a Russian prison.

There was probably more from the panel, but that was the gist of it and what we saw.

The footage looked just as good as what we saw in the original and Downey is on the ball, man. I love his Stark. The footage totally got the geek juices flowing and erased any doubts that the movie might not live up to the original. Of course, that’s just a few money shots, but it’s also the character moments and the work from Downey that got me super excited. Can’t wait to see more!

Hopefully they release the Con footage so everybody can see it and get jazzed. Will interrogate anyone I can to find out if that happens. Will report back with more soon!

PS Sorry for the typos... been crazy trying to get these reports filed between panels and interview times (while fighting a draining battery no less) and it's radically cut back on my re-read time.

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter