12 Iron Man Villains We'd Like To See In The Movies

Let’s face it – Iron Man 2 had some issues. However, there’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sam Rockwell is a brilliant Justin Hammer, and he should be a recurring thorn in Tony Stark’s side as a chief corporate competitor with disturbing jealousy issues. Hammer was always a generous employer of super-powered mercenaries, and this is a trio that would make for some interesting cinematic action.

Yes, yes, I know that Blacklash eventually became Whiplash, a version of which Mickey Rourke gave us in Iron Man 2. But there’s no reason Hammer wouldn’t try to repurpose the whole crackle-whip thing for somebody a little less temperamental than Anton Vanko – the guy Rourke played in the movie, not the original creator of the Crimson Dynamo armor. Weird that they share the same name – and now that’s what Whiplash is in the comics, too. Comic companies do so much like to make sure their stuff is in line with however the movie people present their original concepts. Anyway, the original Blacklash was just this manic-depressive guy, Marc Scarletti, who dressed like a frou-frou pirate and had trick whips with funky little powers. He’s also worked for the Maggia, so he can fit in with Count Nefaria’s bunch, too, but he eventually reformed and had a wife and kid and everything. It ended badly, but still.

The original Blizzard was a Hungarian scientist named Gregor Shapanka, a Stark employee caught stealing from the company, so he invented a suit that can fling ice around to fight Iron Man. The one pictured above is Donald Gill, who was really just in it for the money, and despite being in a group called The Masters of Evil, he eventually tried to join the bad-guys-trying-to-make-good team called the Thunderbolts. Same thing happened with Fred Myers, aka Boomerang… who really just has trick boomerangs. And, of course, he’s Australian. But his costume got a little better in the modern era, though.

Anyway, these guys could be a lot of fun, especially if it means we get more Rockwell to boot. Not every villain has to be THE villain. You can just have a slew of guys with cheap tricks like this to make life annoying for Tony and Rhodey.

Suggested Casting: Gerard Butler as Boomerang, Jason Segel as Blizzard, Neil Patrick Harris as Blacklash

Now this guy would make things very interesting. The “unholy ghost” that Hammer’s trio were hunting in the image above was none other than this mysterious man with phasing and invisibility technology, a brilliant technological mind bent on the destruction of all corporations everywhere – something that could be supremely relevant to the modern world, if played correctly in a film. He was an industrial saboteur, someone who would make an enemy of both Stark and Hammer – and anybody else he’d view as an exploitative business criminal.

He’s ruthless in his efforts – perfectly willing to murder those he views as culpable in the conspiracies he sees everywhere and being almost completely undetectable while doing it. He does seem to have a sort of moral code, though, despite working as a mercenary. This was evident during his stint with the Thunderbolts (right alongside Boomerang, coincidentally enough), where he seemed to value doing good work to help people. Even it was in his own strange, broken and decidedly unhygienic way.

Honestly, this guy would be perfect for an Iron Man movie, and could make things very complex in his illustration that the hero isn’t always heroic.

Suggested Casting: Brad Dourif

This freelance espionage specialist should be right up there with The Ghost, as one of his most memorable moments is when he was killed by getting phased into a wall – never a pleasant thing. That was the first of three different Spymasters – it seems Tony Stark’s bad guys are big on having multiple dudes behind the mask. The first Spymaster was also one of Hammer’s hires, and he successfully stole a lot of Stark’s industrial secrets, prompting Tony to go nuts in the “Armor Wars” event and hunt down and destroy anybody using his proprietary technology.

The second Spymaster, Nathan Lemon, won the mantle in a deathmatch, and he actually uncovered the fact that Iron Man and Tony Stark were the same person (the comics were always using that “flimsy” excuse that Iron Man was Stark’s personal bodyguard) while working for the Mandarin. However, he lost the Spymaster championship when the guy pictured above, Sinclair Abbot, completely destroyed him – imprisoning him and then getting his own wife to kill him.

Abbot was out to humble Stark, playing the long game against him, and scoring one for the Spymaster name by actually hiring The Ghost to bother him. The bigger score came when he actually managed to kill off one of Stark’s oldest friends, Happy Hogan – the guy Jon Favreau plays in the movies. However, Abbot was eventually caught infiltrating and appears to have committed suicide by cop rather than suffer through life in prison. That might also have come from guilt about stabbing the hell out of the boyfriend he’d been lying to about his identity in service of the job.

While it ain’t quite a suit of armor, you’ve got to admit that Spymaster look is pretty cool. The name might be a bit much for anyone actually trucking in secrecy to actually use – but then again, if they don’t know your real name, it seems like you’re mastering being a spy pretty darn well. There’s a lot you can do with this guy – even if it’s just getting him phased into a solid object and dying gruesomely.

Suggested Casting: Daniel Craig. Just because.

While it’s true that in The Avengers, we probably got as close as we’re going to get to He Whose Limbs Shatter Mountains And Whose Back Scrapes The Sun with that flying Chitauri space-eel monster, but come on – this is a giant dragon who wears shortpants.

Yeah, it’s unlikely modern audiences would take Fin Fang Foom seriously, but they could just call him Foom and have him be a giant goddamned dragon who can talk. It turns out he’s an alien from the planet Kakaranathara and he’s been used as a minion by the Mandarin. That’s all the connection you need, because he’s a giant goddamned dragon.

Suggested Casting: Ving Rhames