Is War Machine Going to Make a Full Recovery In 'Avengers: Infinity War' Thanks to Bleeding Edge?

For the most part, we've only seen brief glimpses of a few Avengers in the featurette released, and in the images leaked from the film's set. Among the images revealed, we've seen characters like Doctor Strange, Wong, Bruce Banner, and Iron Man himself teamed up, but without the rest of the Avengers. Could these be the last remaining Avengers or just a segment where the teams are split up? Either way, Iron Man is the more intriguing presence, simply because he's donning the highly anticipated Bleeding Edge armor.

There's been no confirmation as of yet, but hints at the Bleeding Edge have been present since Doctor Strange, wherein the Bleeding Edge tech was name dropped by Stephen Strange himself. Now, he probably doesn't have anything to do with its development, but Stark has made it work nonetheless, evidenced by the set images released. Check them out below:

In the images, Stark is wearing a very sleek, high-tech suit which strays quite a bit from the mechanized appearances of his prior Iron Man suits. It still has the general themes of an Iron Man armor, except the arc reactor placed in the chest looks to be attached directly to Tony Stark's body. This is important to take notice of for two reasons.

For one, Stark had the arc reactor originally placed in his body, removed during the ending monologue of Iron Man 3. Secondly, the images of RDJ on set have shown him in his normal Tony Stark attire, but with a new, high-tech arc reactor placed on his chest, even when he's outside the suit.

What's interesting about this is that the glimpses of Stark with an arc reactor on his chest seem to provide enough evidence to conclude that he has successfully integrated the Bleeding Edge tech into his body.

Since he removed the old arc reactor from his chest, a new one means Tony integrated the tech into his physiology on purpose this time around. With that being known, we can count on Tony Stark experimenting with the tech further, if it proves to be as useful as its comic counterpart.

If you don't remember, the events of Civil War left Rhodey semi-paralyzed, and unable to continue his career as War Machine. But with the Bleeding Edge tech showing up in the MCU, Rhodey may be in for a quick recovery.

As long as the Bleeding Edge's function is somewhat similar to its comic counterpart, then it could definitely be used to heal Rhodes. Plus, the comics have depicted James Rhodes being subjected to Bleeding Edge after he was critically injured. So, there's already a set precedent for Rhodey using the Bleeding Edge as well.

As for the MCU version, it does seem logical that Rhodes utilize the Bleeding Edge just like Stark has. And from what was recently said by Don Cheadle in an interview with Good Morning America, his character will be wearing a type of bionic apparatus that assists him in walking around, an apparatus that may have been designed with Bleeding Edge.

Don Cheadle: "I don’t know that I’d like to use that word, I like fake… It’s an augmentation. It’s somewhat bionic.”

Cheadle says it's not necessarily an apparatus, but more of an augmentation. That's important to acknowledge here because Bleeding Edge is also a type of augmentation. The tech is implanted into the host's body to improve their physical state, which is essentially what an augmentation does. Cheadle also points out that the apparatus is somewhat bionic, which is the more intriguing characteristic because "bionic" is probably the word best used to describe the Bleeding Edge. That said, Cheadle was likely alluding to the Bleeding Edge when describing the bionic apparatus his character will be using in the Infinity Wars.

Avengers: Infinity War opens in theaters on May 8, 2018.