Armor Wars is happening. After months of rumors and speculations, Kevin Feige pulled the curtains off the mystery surrounding Armor Wars at D23 Expo this year. Not much later, Armor Wars was converted into a feature film project instead of a Disney+ series, which will be based on the comics storyline of the same name. Armor Wars will star Don Cheadle, reprising his role of James Rhodes, aka War Machine, leading his film in the MCU for the first time. The actor has portrayed the character in the continuity for quite a long, starting with Iron Man 2, taking over the role from Terrence Howard. Since then, the character has grown of high importance, first as Tony Stark’s confidante and ally and then as a prominent member of the Avengers.

Now, in Armor Wars, War Machine will have a new responsibility of protecting his friend, Iron Man’s legacy. Talking to Entertainment Weekly, Don Cheadle revealed that the movie would offer more profound insight into Rhodey. The film will explore Rhodey’s personal life and relationship with several other characters. He further stated that the film would dive into the aspects of his life that people haven’t seen before.

Who is Rhodey? Where did he come from? What are the relationships? Who’s important to him? Who is he important to? What does he want to do? What are his goals? What are his desires outside of the relationship with these people that we’ve seen? Who is he when he’s by himself? A lot of these things we haven’t seen before, so there’s a… like I said, a good opportunity to explore all that stuff and hopefully create a full character that now, when we see the suit, we see everything else, we know what’s behind that.

Don Cheadle further explained how he believes Armor Wars to be a ‘rebirth’ of the character, quoting:

It’s a rebirth in a way, you know? It’s coming back to this character but we’ve never gone to the places that we’re about to go to in the [movie]. So, I feel like we’re, in some ways, just getting to know him even after all this time.

War Machine - Marvel Cinematic Universe
Paramount Pictures

In this story, Rhodey will get a chance to explore himself in the new post-Endgame era. In the same interview, Cheadle said how Rhodey has always been there in stories focused on other characters and backdrops, but Armor Wars will be the film to give him the same exploration space.

That’s the hope, is that he gets to be more three-dimensional and, you know, things that we like, don’t like, his desires, his fears, all the things that I think we’ve only cursorily looked at as Rhodey. He’s always sort of existed in the context of, you know, Tony, and the MCU, and his job as an Avenger. But really, like sort of, peel all that back and really get to know what it is.

Armor Wars deals with the aftermath of Iron Man’s death. The story exclusively focuses on Tony Stark’s technology falling into the wrong hands. It will be up to his friend to make things right and protect his friend’s galaxy. We expect a change in War Machine’s suit and a new antagonist to the franchise for Rhodey to spar with. And it would be interesting to see how Don Cheadle carried an MCU project on his shoulders.

Armor Wars does not have a release date. However, James Rhodes will appear in the upcoming Disney+ original, Secret Invasion.