Chief Mar­vel edi­tor, Joe Que­sada, has answered some more ques­tion on the reg­u­lar Cup ‘O Joe col­umn, this time per­tain­ing to Thor and Iron Man 2.

On Thor

Que­sada talks with great pas­sion about Branagh and Kevin Feige’s cre­ative part­ner­ship, and the delight it was to watch them explore the Thor ideas and mythol­ogy. His approach to the Thor fran­chise is Shake­spearean, explain­ing emo­tions between char­ac­ters in each scene, their moti­va­tion and how it relates to the movie’s plot.

Char­ac­ter devel­op­ment looks like it shall play a sig­nif­i­cant part in the Thor adap­ta­tion, Que­sada describes this qual­ity as “quin­tes­sen­tial” in cre­at­ing a Mar­vel movie. There are capes and big ham­mers, but, “It’s about what makes char­ac­ters tick”. And Que­sada adds, “there’s rea­sons and moti­va­tions for him to hit peo­ple with his ham­mer… hard!”

When it comes to mar­ket­ing Thor, it’s all about rais­ing aware­ness before the movie’s release. Sim­i­lar to the Iron Man approach, Thor’s char­ac­ter shall be intro­duced to kids through ani­ma­tion, in par­tic­u­lar in “Super Hero Squad” and “Avengers Animated”.

On Iron Man 2

Que­sada describes Favreau as intense and cere­bral, and is again happy to relay the director’s under­stand­ing and pas­sion for the Tony Stark char­ac­ter, “Why put on the suit?”. Favreau’s approach is about hav­ing the world’s most pow­er­ful weapon and mak­ing the story big­ger, all the while keep­ing it “stream­lined” and ulti­mately main­tain­ing that much needed rel­e­vance at the per­sonal level.

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!)

Con­tin­u­ing on from the recent Kevin Feige rev­e­la­tions, First Show­ing have pro­vided a sec­ond com­men­tary of the event, which offers up some more details of these three movies.

Iron Man 2

In the first movie the film mak­ers man­aged to get the tone just right, for the sequel they are look­ing to add char­ac­ters and up the action whilst main­tain­ing this tone — keep­ing the right sense of humour. Film­ing is half way through and the major­ity of the spo­ken parts are com­plete, the next six weeks shall be ded­i­cated to action scenes!

Thor

There will be no Shake­spearean dia­logue in the Thor movie, despite its usage in the comics. Some scenes will take place in Asgard.

Cap­tain America

The first avenger movie shall be a period piece, set pre­dom­i­nantly dur­ing WWII. It is hoped that the movie can cap­ture a feel­ing sim­i­lar to Raiders of the Lost Ark, with the same lev­els of fun. Side­kick Bucky (wiki) will also make an appear­ance, in some capacity.

As for direc­tor Joe Johnston,

A lit­tle bit of The Rock­e­teer, lots of Octo­ber Sky, and a lit­tle bit of the ship designs that John­ston did for Star Wars, allud­ing to how this is the per­fect movie for him to direct. “It’s the movie his entire career has been lead­ing towards.”

As com­mented on by Jon Favreau in his twitter,

Online press vis­it­ing the set today to speak with Robert and me.

AICN and SHH were two of these. They’ve been asked to hold back their reports until Comic-con, when I’m sure we’ll get some big announce­ments. In the mean time they have pro­vided some pre­view reports which I have included below:

AICN’s Beaks

Yesterday’s trip to the set of IRON MAN 2 at Mar­vel Stu­dios’ head­quar­ters in Man­hat­tan Beach was def­i­nitely more filet than Bernsen.

How much more? I’m not at lib­erty to say. Yet. Para­mount and Mar­vel have asked that we hold our full set visit report until closer to Comic Con. And since I’d like to be invited to the sets of THOR, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE AVENGERS, etc., I’ve decided it’s worth my while to play ball.

They have, how­ever, given us clear­ance to post a brief pre­view piece in which I whip you up into a frenzy by telling you that the sets are elab­o­rate and ultra-sleek (they’re using as many as five sound­stages on the Raleigh Stu­dios lot), the cre­ative team is in a groove, and, as far as I can tell, every­one is extremely pleased with what they’re get­ting thus far. This was appar­ent from the way Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr., Matthew Liba­tique and oth­ers tweaked and tweaked this one really cool, fairly lengthy take — in which Tony Stark [redacted] — until it was utter, fluid perfection.

Most of the stuff we saw yes­ter­day was set in Stark’s work­shop, which has been mod­i­fied to include some nifty new giz­mos (this includes the floor, oddly enough). There were also a few tan­ta­liz­ing clues left strewn about just to get us worked up over what/who might or might not be appear­ing in the sequel. We were also given an unplanned peek at some­thing stashed away on another sound­stage — and I’m not sure they’re going to let us write about this in our offi­cial write-up next month. Not that my mea­ger words could do it justice.

SHH’s Ryan Rotten

Is Favreau falling into the trap of adding too many ele­ments to his once proven win­ning equa­tion? That’s just one ques­tion Super­hero Hype! had in mind when we ven­tured down to Man­hat­tan Beach where we found Favreau and com­pany back on the sound­stage and in Tony Stark’s lab for a set visit. While there, we toured the remod­eled lab, caught a few glimpses of some very interesting–and revealing–props and drooled over the new Iron Man suit. We also got a chance to speak with Favreau, Downey Jr. and Marvel’s Kevin Feige (the pro­ducer) about Stark’s lat­est adven­ture and the chal­lenges he faces.

We’d love to tell you more, how­ever, we have to remain tight-lipped for now. Sim­ply know Favreau is piec­ing together what sounds like a lay­ered, larger sequel that’s steer­ing Stark in the right emo­tional direc­tion with a few sur­prises in store for the fans. Look for a full set report next month! In the mean­time, “keep the skies clear,” more Iron Man is on the way.

Empire recently spoke with Jon Favreau and Mickey Rourke about Iron Man 2. Favreau gave some back­ground to the Tony Stark char­ac­ter in the sequel before giv­ing cryp­tic clues when quizzed on ‘Rhodesy’ and War Machine.

“Tony’s expected to be a role model and I don’t think he’s ready to be one. He’s under a great deal of pres­sure and when you’re under pres­sure, I think you find out­lets for that. That’s one of the ten­sions of the film: it’s one thing to say you’re Iron Man, and another thing to actu­ally become Iron Man.”

“Rhodesy is def­i­nitely step­ping up in this film. Let me put it this way: Tony’s not the only per­son with tech­nol­ogy in the film.”

Mean­while, Mickey Rourke com­ments on his Whiplash suit (we’ve already seen a pos­si­ble con­cept piece for this)

“I’m hav­ing the time of my life! […] It’s been really bru­tal, because my Iron Man suit weighs 23lb. It’s sort of a half-suit, with half my skin show­ing, with lots of Russ­ian tat­toos, because [Whiplash is just] out of a Russian-zone prison.”

Lat­est updates include:

Leav­ing Edwards Air Force Base. Head­ing back to LA to fin­ish out the week. My awe­some crew worked their butts off. We got some great stuff.

Dusk in the high desert. The wind is blow­ing hard.

Shoot­ing some scenes at Edwards Air Force Base. They have some pretty cool toys out here.

2AM and we’re on the mar­tini shot.

Two units going today. Shoot­ing late into the night.

A french arti­cle from Maprin­ci­paute has revealed that Iron Man 2 will be film­ing a large func­tion room scene, a scene at the docks and a scene at the Casino. Iron Man 2 will be com­prised of three major actions scenes, one of these shall include footage of Monaco. The trans­la­tion via Google:

A large func­tion room scene

A total of one hun­dred peo­ple are on the deck of the top secret shoot. The cam­eras will arise this morn­ing between 6 am and 7 pm on the Boule­vard Albert 1er. Then, fol­low­ing the Grand Prix cir­cuit on Sat­ur­day 16 May, the shoot­ing will con­tinue Boule­vard Louis II (between 6 am and 8 pm), dock of the United States between 8 am and noon then quai Albert-1er between 12h and 13h30. Sun­day, teams invest Boule­vard Albert 1st from 6am to 7am, the Avenue d’Ostende between 7am and 9am and Avenue of Spélugues between 9am and 11 hours. At these loca­tions and sched­ules, peri­odic inter­rup­tions of traf­fic will be car­ried out.

But the peak of the shoot will be May 25, place du Casino, between 6 hours and 17 hours. A long sequence will be filmed with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of many extras. “There are three major action scenes in this movie, and one of them will be com­posed of footage in the Prin­ci­pal­ity” says pro­duc­tion. Only cer­tainty, the film was released on screens in April 2010 and expects pro­duc­tion even offer a sneak pre­view in the Principality!

The set reports and pic­tures are start­ing to come in from Randy’s Donuts. From the scene, James told Col­lider on the phone:

My friend – let’s call him James — said that film­ing at the loca­tion lasted between 45 min­utes to an hour and there were tons of pro­duc­tion assis­tants and pro­duc­tion peo­ple around the set. That’s the rea­son why we don’t have a new pic­ture for this article…he never felt like he could take out his cam­era and get the shot.

Any­how, James said that he saw a stand in for Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark) on set and that he watched Nick Fury race up to the donut place in a blue gov­ern­ment car and he got out and walked to his right to get a bet­ter view of where Iron Man would be. The cam­era was on a crane. James said it appeared that Iron Man was going to be in the donut hole on the roof and that Nick Fury was yelling at him, but he couldn’t hear what he was saying.

He also reported that Sam Jack­son was in the same cos­tume as the end of the first film – a long black trench coat.

Iron Man sit­ting in the big donut? Here’s some con­fir­ma­tion via Peo​ple​.com: