Tony Stark may be dead, but his corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t. Marvel Studios set out to prove that last week by announcing two new shows for Disney+ that further explore the Stark side of the MCU. Don Cheadle is slated to once again play James “Rhodey” Rhodes in Armor Wars, and Tony’s unofficial apprentice Riri Williams will make her live-action debut in Ironheart.
Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, introduced both shows as part of the uncontrolled firehose of entertainment news that he unleashed during last week’s Walt Disney Company’s Investor Day. It’s hard not to shake the impression that Disney is brute-forcing its Disney+ streaming service into a more prominent place in the market, having announced three more “cinematic-quality” MCU shows before the first wave of programming has had the chance to officially arrive.
Dominique Thorne (If Beale Street Could Talk) has been cast as Williams, who is described by Disney+ marketing as “a genius inventor who creates the most advanced suit of armor since Iron Man.” Nothing else has been established about the show, such as its producers, additional cast, or plot.
Originally created in 2016’s Invincible Iron Man #7 by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato, Riri is a brilliant but cynical and antisocial inventor from Chicago who earns a scholarship to MIT at the age of 15. While there, she uses the campus’s resources to develop her own suit of powered armor similar to Tony Stark’s and falls backward into becoming a superhero.
Later, with Tony’s support, Riri refines her armor, installs an onboard AI (called N.A.T.A.L.I.E., after her late best friend), and adopts the codename Ironheart. She received a short-lived solo book which ran for 12 issues between January of 2019 and 2020, written by Eve Ewing, which further refined her background and supporting cast. Ironheart has also made animated appearances in the Disney XD Spider-Man show and on her own 44-minute Marvel Rising special, voiced by High School Musical‘s Sofia Wylie.
Disney+’s other new show, Armor Wars, is explicitly based on a comics storyline from the ’80s that’s fallen into relative obscurity. The Disney+ show will star War Machine, played again by Cheadle, who must investigate after some of Tony Stark’s technology falls into “the wrong hands.” (Arguably, those hands included Tony’s, but whatever, they’re rolling.)
The story it’s based on is from the first volume of Invincible Iron Man, which ran in issues #225 to #232 between December 1987 and June of 1988, by Bob Layton, David Michelinie, Mark Bright, and Barry Windsor-Smith. This was during what Iron Man fans call the “Silver Centurion” period, when Tony had traded in his usual color scheme for a unique red and silver suit.
In the original “Armor Wars,” Tony abruptly discovers that many of the super-powered villains and mercenaries in the world are using technology that’s derived in part from his own early designs, courtesy of his old rival Justin Hammer. Tony resolves to track down and destroy all of the rogue operators’ suits of armor, as otherwise, he’d feel responsible for any harm they caused in the future. In his obsession, though, he goes over the edge, and quickly ends up at odds with the Avengers, SHIELD, and the U.S. government.
Both Ironheart and Armor Wars are planned to premiere as Disney+ exclusives in 2021.
Source: Marvel Entertainment
![\"IT電腦補習](\"http://itteacheritfreelance.hk/test/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/logo2-2.png\"){kind=logo}
www.itsec.hk
www.itsec.vip
www.itseceu.uk
Leave a Reply