The first teaser poster for Iron Man 2 has been released, and yes, that is War Machine in the background.

Iron Man 2 has been finished filming for a while now and is deep in to post production, so it was about time some official artwork finally came out.  (never mind several minutes of footage being showed at San Diego Comic Con this past August that has still yet to officially hit the Internet)  You can click on the image to the right for a larger view, although it isn’t super huge like most images released online.

This is one of those times where I might go on and on about War Machine’s inclusion in the film, but for once I am taking spoilers into consideration because people who only know the first movie know nothing of the character and will want to keep it that way until the movie comes out.  If you want to know more about him, check out the Wikipedia entry on War Machine, but I will warn you I know the movie is following the same character being the secret identity, so spoiler warning for sure.

I am a little concerned for this movie.  I loved the first one, but the second film seems to be following the comic book movie status quo of “it’s a sequel, it needs tons more characters!”  We have Robert Downey Jr. back as Tony Stark, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Don Cheadle stepping into the role of Col. James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes and Samuel L. Jackson appearing in an expanded role as Nick Fury.  Then this is where it gets messy as they are adding Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer, Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, Mickey Rourke as Whiplash along with an assortment of other minor characters.

Has Marvel learned nothing from the messes known as Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Spider-Man 3 and so on?  You can overdo the number of characters in a movie very easily.  I have a lot of faith in director Jon Favreau, but this is not off to a very encouraging start.

I’ll go into the movie with an open mind, but I am leery of what could go wrong here.