Here’s Mickey Rourke in full Whiplash cos­tume. Click the image for a high res version.

Whiplash (Mickey Rourke) sports a power pack on his chest that looks sim­i­lar to the one that Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) uses.

“The tech­nolo­gies are def­i­nitely related,” says direc­tor Jon Favreau. “That’s part of the core theme of the film.”

The villain’s alter ego, Ivan Vanko, is a Russ­ian who “has con­structed his own ver­sion of a suit,” Favreau says. Among the cre­ative inno­va­tions: a pair of whips, pow­ered by the suit’s glow­ing chest piece, that are expected to keep Iron Man cracking.

This first image of the char­ac­ter shows Whiplash mak­ing an appear­ance at the Monaco His­toric Grand Prix. Favreau as usual is tight-lipped about plot points and declines to dis­cuss whether the big-screen Whiplash is, as in the Mar­vel Comics, a weapons designer who works for Justin Ham­mer (Sam Rock­well), a com­peti­tor of Tony Stark/Iron Man.

“We like to play into and against the expec­ta­tions that peo­ple might have, so we mixed it up a bit,” Favreau says.

Rourke’s per­for­mances in Sin City and The Wrestler helped con­vince the direc­tor that the actor was the best can­di­date to face Downey in his sequel to last spring’s block­buster that grossed $318.4 million.

“It was very impor­tant that the vil­lain be as com­pelling as can be. … Once I thought of Mickey in that role, it made me under­stand how to shape the story.”

(Thanks Leroy!)

We recently reported that the Iron Man sequel would be film­ing some big actions scenes at the Monaco Grand Prix. With this in mind, the lat­est news is that the Iron Man 2 crew are build­ing an enor­mous Monaco GP set com­plete with replica race­track at Downey Stu­dios in Downey, California.

One com­menter at SHH suggests,

This is sup­posed to be the famous car rac­ing scene where..stark is drunk as iron­man and gets pissed because he bet on a race car that is los­ing and sab­o­tages the races and blows up all the other cars..causing himm to fear is a hero or a nat­ural villain…good stuff?

Com­ing via Pit­doc, AICN and the Las Vegas licens­ing show, we have updated Iron Man, Thor, Cap­tain Amer­ica and The Avengers logos, as well as an ‘Avengers Assem­ble’ badge.

Com­ing via Pit­doc, AICN and the Las Vegas licens­ing show, we have our first look at an Iron Man 2 poster, click for super high resolution.

Jon Favreau com­mented on the loca­tion in his tweets — here is a lit­tle con­fir­ma­tion from the base that Iron Man 2 filmed here, along with some pictures:

Scenes from the upcom­ing movie Iron­man II were filmed here May 11 through 13, with the sup­port of about 60 mem­bers of Team Edwards tak­ing part as extras and tech­ni­cal advisors.

The direc­tor, Jon Favreau said he was excited to return to Edwards for the sequel for the land­scape, but not for the way it looks but for the his­tory it pos­sesses and the pro­fes­sional Air­men and Marines here.

“All these real mil­i­tary assets make the movie more authen­tic and the topog­ra­phy and the beauty of the Desert and flight­line open the movie up,” he said. “But it’s the rich his­tory of the loca­tion and the deep roots it has with flight that gives Tony Stark and his father a pedi­gree in the aero­space industry.”

Com­ing Soon were sent some pic­tures of a con­struc­tion site bear­ing the ‘Rasputin’ work­ing title at the entrance. It all looks very big. You can find this at the foot of the Sepul­veda Dam in L.A.

Latino Review have received some con­cept art in the post claim­ing to be Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash in Iron Man 2. The style of the image is inline with con­cept designs, the Rourke-ness and details are non-distinct, some­thing a faker prob­a­bly wouldn’t do. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s the real deal or not.

On Loca­tion News have posted a selec­tion of overly water­marked ‘for sale’ paparazzi images from the lat­est Randy’s Donuts shoot. Due to the com­mer­cial nature of the images I can­not include them here, but I can give you guys the link and a screen­shot of the thumb­nails. This is our first look at Nick Fury in Iron Man 2, with the famil­iar eye patch and trench coat. There are also many more shots of Robert Downey Jr. in the Iron Man suit, one includes the hel­met being passed to him.

MAY 6th LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA **EXCLUSIVE** Robert Downey Jr. film­ing Iron Man 2. In this funny scene, Iron Man takes a dough­nut break in the hole of a giant dough­nut shop sign which is an LA land­mark. Samuel L. Jack­son as Nick Fury is below and ask Iron Man if he would like some cof­fee with his doughnuts.