Left paralyzed from the waist down following his involvement in Captain America: Civil War, Colonel James Rhodes was last seen being nursed along the road to recovery. From what we understand, Tony Stark fast-tracked some form of prosthetic device to help Rhodey walk again, which means he’ll be back in time for both Infinity War and its unnamed sequel. But if things had gone according to the original plan, we could have seen a lot more of War Machine over the past few years.
That’s because at one point, Marvel was looking into doing a solo film for the character. Obviously, it didn’t end up happening, but while speaking with Complex in a recent interview, Black Panther scribe Joe Robert Cole revealed that interesting bit of trivia.
For those who don’t know, Cole found his way into the studio through their writer program, and as he explains here, it’s that which got him his first meeting with the House of Ideas. Recounting the experience, he said:
At that meeting, they also said they were thinking of doing a War Machine movie. I pitched a concept and won that job to write the script but they decided, based on what Iron Man 3 was going to be, they weren’t going to do War Machine anymore. But they asked if I’d be interested in joining their writer’s program instead.
Though Iron Man 3 was a fine film, it was far from Marvel’s best effort and it does sting a bit to know that we could have seen a War Machine movie instead. After all, Rhodes really is a fascinating character and though he isn’t always given much to do on the big screen, fans of Marvel comics will know that there’s tons of material to draw from and a solo outing for the hero definitely could’ve worked.
With any luck, maybe the studio will still revisit this idea somewhere down the road. Then again, given that he’s already 53, Don Cheadle may not be able to keep playing the role for that much longer. Not to mention that there’s rumors that the character won’t even make it out of Avengers 4 alive. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.
For now, we can all look forward to another appearance from War Machine when he joins Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to help them defeat Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, which drops on May 4th.