James Rhodes—or Rhodey, if ya nasty (or if your name is Tony Stark)—has been a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since the dawning of time. Sure, he had a facelift but still, he was there. (What up, Terrance Howard?) So, why haven’t we had more War Machine content? Probably because Marvel was worried about the greater storyline of the Infinity Saga, but now that Thanos has come and gone, why not give Rhodey his due in one of the Disney+ Marvel programs?
Rumor of just that hit Twitter, and fans instantly started to speculate what a War Machine show would even entail.
WAR MACHINE is in early development for Disney+ pic.twitter.com/Ap13GTJ1lU
— Disney+ Updates (@moredisneyplus) July 17, 2019
For me, it’s simple: Give me Rhodey in those five years between the Snap and the Blip, when he was working with the government and hunting down Clint Barton. The thing about Rhodey is that he is probably the most interesting character in the entire MCU. Within the context of the MCU, we know that Rhodey met Tony when the two were at MIT together. So, what if we got to see some of Rhodey and Tony’s time at MIT?
The show could give us a look into the character that we never really got in the movies. Sure, Don Cheadle brought Rhodey to life in a way that never had us questioning his actions or his idea as a character, but still, we’d love to know more about this man who has been Tony Stark’s best friend since they were young and who fell from the sky and dealt with his inability to walk anymore with a grace that many can only dream to have in such situations.
When dreams of a War Machine movie were on the horizon, Don Cheadle had opened up about what we could have seen in it, and there’s no reason why those same themes couldn’t come into play in a Disney+ show. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Cheadle talked about Rhodey’s position in the military, as well as his allegiance to Tony and the Avengers, and how that tension between the two worlds can be explored in a deeper way:
We kicked it around a bit. There was definitely going to be a lot of tension between his job as a military man and his allegiances to the code that he swore an oath to uphold, versus the changing world. I think they probably would have run afoul of each other a little bit, but I don’t know if he would have been a straight fugitive, or if he would have become decommissioned. But there was definitely going to be some tension between those two worlds.
There’s something about James Rhodes as a character that’s a mystery to us because we only know of his involvement with Tony Stark through little comments and half-baked stories that the two mention to each other, and to see more of Rhodey and what makes this man into the brilliant military mind that we saw in the MCU would be an extremely interesting thing to explore, and now I want a War Machine show injected into my veins.
(image: Marvel Entertainment)
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