Don Cheadle on War Machine’s Place in Captain America: Civil War

This past weekend, Don Cheadle was at the Sundance Film Festival with his upcoming directorial debut Miles Ahead, and during an interview, we had a chance to talk with him about the future of his Marvel character, James “Rhodey” Rhodes, aka War Machine.

Don Cheadle took over the character with 2010’s Iron Man 2 and then returned for its sequel Iron Man 3 a few years later. Last summer, War Machine made a brief appearance in Avengers: Age of Ultron and War Machine will next be seen in Captain America: Civil War as part of the battle between Cap and Iron Man.

At this point, most are assuming that War Machine’s role will continue to expand into 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and that he will be one of the many characters the Russos will bring together, and Don Cheadle talked a little bit about what he knows.

“I never know what it’s going to be and they keep their cards very close to their breast with Marvel,” he told us. “I never know where the character’s going to go, but he’s become more and more and in the next one, you’ll see that what happens to Rhodey is a little bit more intense and pivotal to what happens in the rest of the stories.”

“I ultimately like it when we’re there and I’m working with other actors and it’s fun, but it can be very tedious,” Don Cheadle says about the experience playing in the Marvel Universe. “A lot of time you’re looking at a green screen and a tennis ball on a C-stand, and it could’t be more antithetical to doing what Miles Ahead was, but you just give over to the elements and go, ‘Oh these are the toys and I’m playing with the biggest and best toys’ and we’re flying around and doing stuff that if I was ten years old, I would be having the greatest time in my life.”

Miles Ahead is out in select cities on April 1, and then Captain America: Civil War follows a month later on May 6. We’ll have to see where War Machine goes from there.