Tropic Thunder
Unrated Director’s Cut
Directed by Ben Stiller
Starring Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black, Nick Nolte, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride
Paramount Home Entertainment
Release date: November 18, 2008

Tropic Thunder, the first full-on comedy directed by Ben Stiller since his sublime tribute to airheaded male models Zoolander, is both a love letter and a poison pen middle finger to the increasingly overblown business of moviemaking. It’s a measure of the amount of serious guts and brains that it would take a major Hollywood studio (in this case Dreamworks) to green-light an expensive action-comedy that’s also a savage satire of the industry itself. But a movie like Tropic Thunder has been a long time coming. Having your cake and eating it too has rarely been this hilarious.

Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) is only a few days into the shooting of his directorial debut, the mega-budget Vietnam War epic Tropic Thunder based on an acclaimed memoir of the same name by veteran Sgt. John “Four Leaf” Tayback (Nick Nolte, giving great grizzle), and the production is in an unprecedented state of chaos.

Jon Favreau spoke at a big press gathering for the upcoming DVD release of the Iron Man and he was open to share where he may be going with the sequel and maybe even a third film.

The big morsel involves of Jim Rhodes, aka War Machine. Rhodes, played by Terrence Howard, wasn’t a huge part of the first movie, but there are plans to make up for that. Favreau stated that he would love to do the “Demon in a Bottle” storyline, where Tony Stark falls into the deep, dark hole of alcoholism. I’m not familiar with the Iron Man comic, but it looks as if this would be where War Machine stepped in and did his thing. Fans of the comic I’m sure would very much like to see this play out.

Favreau also mentioned that The Mandarin would be used as one of the franchise’s big villains. The problem is that Favreau isn’t quite sure how to integrate him into the story yet, so this looks like it would be part of the third film if it were to come.