Mickey Rourke has a Cockatoo, Your argument is invalid

"Squaaawk, this phone's not even plugged in. Squaaawk."

Iron Man 2 just released a new batch of stills to Yahoo, which would be boring but for one thing: reminding me that Mickey Rourke’s character gets drunk and talks to a parrot.  I’ve reported this before, but ThePlaylist has a nice breakdown:

From all reports, Rourke was a tad difficult on the set of “Iron Man 2,” which is otherwise a reportedly fun and amicable set. Rourke apparently showed his method-like peculiarity by insisting his Russian career-criminal character Whiplash could boast a nefarious pet cockatoo as some kind of sidekick that we can see in these new pictures.

Apparently this was Rourke’s way of coloring-up the character. “I told [Jon] Favreau, ‘I don’t want to just play him as a one-dimensional pussy,’” Rourke told EW earlier this year. “He let me have a cockatoo, who I talk to and get drunk with while I’m making my suit.”

It’s easy to make fun of Rourke thinking the solution to one-dimensional pussyism is a Cockatoo, but I think he’s onto something.  Let’s think about this:  You see any guy walking down the street with a shaved chest and white highlights in his hair, you probably think, “Pussy.”  But add a parrot to the same guy’s shoulder with whom he’s drunkenly carrying on a conversation… Suddenly you’re like, “Whoa, I bet that guy has some stories.”

Apparently that’s Favreau playing Happy Hogan, Tony Stark’s bodyguard.  That’s the suitcase armor he’s carrying.