MCU: 11 Things You Learn Rewatching Iron Man 2

4. The Movie Totally Failed Mickey Rourke

Iron Man 2 was Mickey Rourke's first blockbuster movie role after he launched a major comeback with his 2008 instant classic The Wrestler (for which he scored a Best Actor Oscar nomination).

It seemed like Rourke was back from the Hollywood wilderness, and he was nothing if not perfectly cast as Whiplash. However, because the script made his villain so aggressively boring, Rourke's true movie star comeback was ultimately denied.

Rourke's utterance of "I vant my bird!" became a fast Internet meme, but after a brief appearance in The Expendables later that summer, Rourke pretty much went back to business as usual and largely still appears in straight-to-video dreck today.

If The Wrestler ushered Rourke back into Hollywood's good graces, then Iron Man 2 should've been his feted coming-out party, but instead it was more of an indifferent shoulder shrug.

Rourke himself apparently wasn't too happy with how Whiplash ended up, either, stating, "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...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...I'm never going to mail it in." Oof.