Marvel’s Lost ‘War Machine’ Movie With Don Cheadle Sounds Like The MCU’s Version Of ‘The Fugitive’

The Avengers: Endgame press tour is well underway. Even so, don’t count on learning anything even remotely detail-oriented about the 22nd Marvel Studios film before it snaps up theater audiences’ attention on April 26th. But that doesn’t mean the massive tentpole’s stars aren’t talking about Endgame-adjacent matters. For example, Entertainment Weekly got Don Cheadle, who plays James Rhodes/War Machine, to briefly discuss his character’s abandoned standalone film.

That Marvel had once considered a War Machine movie isn’t news. Black Panther scribe Joe Robert Cole revealed last year that his initial involvement with the Marvel Studios machine was pitching an idea for one that caught the company’s interest. Marvel ultimately passed on the project due to what was going to happen story-wise in Iron Man 3, but it wasn’t until EW‘s time with Cheadle that we learned some minor plot details:

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.

In other words, it sounds like what Cole had in mind for Cheadle’s Rhodey was an on-the-run style of storytelling similar to genre classics like The Fugitive or the MCU’s own The Incredible Hulk. Since the character was instead depicted as a full-blown member and supporter of the United States’ military agenda with his brief Iron Patriot turn in Iron Man 3 (as well as his wholehearted support of the Sokovia Accords in Captain America: Civil War, injury notwithstanding), it makes sense that Marvel decided to pass on it.

Also, neither Rhodey nor the one-armed man killed his wife.