James Badge Dale Bolsters The Villainous Ranks Of 'Iron Man 3'

The latest addition to the cast of Shane Black's Iron Man 3 is James Badge Dale (The Pacific, Rubicon, The Grey), who has signed on to play a villain called Savin. Despite the fact that the film starts shooting just weeks from now, Marvel has done a very good job keeping details of the plot quiet. There are rumors that Ben Kingsley is playing the Mandarin, and other rumors that the overall plot of the film involves nanotechnology and some version of the Extremis storyline from Marvel's comic series.

So who is Savin, and how does he fit into the story?

First up, Deadline has the casting news, but only offers the basic name of the character.

As for Savin, he is likely a version of Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Savin, an Army officer who debuted in Marvel comics pages in the late '80s and was quickly transformed into a cybernetic mercenary called Coldblood-7. Think of him as something like the Marvel Comics version of RoboCop, at least from the perspective of appearance and physical makeup.

The character is a relatively minor one, appearing in only a few storylines, and it seems unlikely that a direct adaptation of his story is in store for Iron Man 3. But he did show up in the Civil War storyline from a few years back, and so isn't totally a musty old fourth-stringer. And the idea of an officer turned into a cybernetic killer by defense technology would fit into the rumors that Iron Man 3 features the Extremis/nanotech storyline.

James Badge Dale has shot a role in The Lone Ranger, and is in both World War Z and Robert Zemekis' new film Flight, as well.