13 Hyped Movie Roles That Were Total Cop-Outs

7. Whiplash (Mickey Rourke) - Iron Man 2

We can all argue until we're blue in the face about Iron Man 3's Mandarin twist, but surely everyone can agree that Mickey Rourke was thoroughly wasted as Ivan Vanko aka Whiplash in Iron Man 2?

It's tough to understand the rationale of hiring Rourke, who was fresh off an Oscar nomination for The Wrestler and general career resurgence, to play such a fecklessly generic villain.

Whiplash is an offputting goof ("I vant my bird") who ends up in a woefully lame final boss fight against Iron Man that too often feels like a facsimile of the previous film's battle against Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).

To his credit, Rourke held nothing back ripping Marvel Studios execs to shreds for leaving so much of his performance on the cutting room floor, with Vanko (apparently) being envisioned as a far more fleshed-out character from the outset. Rourke said of his experience on the film,

"Well, you know, it is f**king too bad, but it's their loss. If they want to make mindless comic book movies, then I don't want to be a part of that. I don't want to have to care so much and work so hard, and then fight them for intelligent reasoning, and just because they're calling the shots they ... You know, I didn't work for three months on the accent and all the adjustments and go to Russia just so I could end up on the floor. Because that can make somebody say at the end of the day, oh f**k 'em, I'm just going to mail it in. But I'm not that kind of guy. I'm never going to mail it in."

What should've been Rourke's blockbuster coming-out party was instead a much-ridiculed footnote, and his career very quickly returned to the straight-to-video swamp. Tragic.