Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau used to see himself as a master at surpassing low expectations. "Nobody expected anything of the first Iron Man movie," he says. "In fact, they rolled their eyes at the thought of launching a franchise with this obscure hero, thinking we were pushing the comic book genre too far."

Then Iron Man came out two summers ago and made $585 million. Suddenly Favreau, the actor-turned-writer-turned-action-movie-mogul, is feeling a new kind of challenge: He has to make the fanboys happy. [...]

Once on board, the Method-trained Rourke learned to speak Russian, spent time in a prison studying the lore of incarceration tattoos and had a gleaming set of metal-plated teeth implanted in his mouth. “My idea was this sort of the Eastern Promises underworld figure, and Mickey added all the other stuff on top of it,” Favreau says.

holy shit, mickey rourke doesn't fuck around does he? damn, i really need to stop reading these articles, posts, and videos about it — probably spoiling the shit out of the movie for me.