Are you wondering what Tony Stark himself thinks about the whole Terrance Howard is out and Don Cheadle is in thing happening with Iron Man 2. After all, Robert Downey, Jr. has a lot invested in this franchise, as it helped boost him back into leading man status after recently doing things like the remake of The Shaggy Dog. A casting change of the character Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes would probably get his lips flapping, right? Well, yes and no. He has something to say about it; he just doesn’t say much.

MTV asked Downey what he thought of Howard’s surprising replacement by Cheadle for the next flying iron suited guy movie. He immediately tried to get himself 50 miles away from the controversy by saying, “I had nothing to do with that decision. I love Terrence very very much. That’s all I’ll say because I haven’t talked to him yet.” Sensing that almost sounded like he was supporting Howard and not Cheadle, Downey added, “I’ve always admired Don [Cheadle]. It’s one of those situations where I still don’t quite know what happened or why.”

The most important thing is that Iron Man 2 is going to be freakin’ awesome, am I right? I just watched the first movie on Blu-ray last night and while Howard was good, he was not irreplaceable. Downey clearly doesn’t want to get himself in the middle of this, as no good can come of it, so he contents himself with vague generalities about the sequel like thus: “I think the important thing with the Iron Man franchise is to not do too much too soon and to make sure we don’t piss off the public that put us in the position we’re in. We’ve just got to keep rolling up our sleeves higher and further up the elbow. If we show up and we’re in the right head space and our heart’s in the right spot and we really think about the audience at every turn and we don’t try to stamp our hipness onto anything. It’s very interactive.” Only now it will be interactive with Cheadle instead of Howard.