First Look at Johansson as Black Widow in Iron Man 2

Here is our first look at Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow in May 2010’s Iron Man 2. To be honest, I hate Scarlett (almost as much as I hate Colin Farrell…almost), but I have to admit the black leather may allow me to put aside my gripes for 2 hours. Below is a picture of Mickey Rourke in his role as Iron Man villain Whiplash. Seeing as the suit looks a little too dated to be competitive with Stark’s ‘titanium alloy’ suit, I assume what we see Rourke wearing is more like a prototype/early design. My guess is that we’ll see a suit worthy of taking on two adversaries by the end (Iron man and War machine).
Though the plot of the movie is under wraps by director Jon Favreau, this is what we do know.

Tony Stark has fallen into a battle with alcoholism, which affects not only Stark industries but his career as a ‘super hero’. Taking advantage of this is Russian villain Ivan Vanko, who dons a suit equipped with two steel whips and an array of gadgets as his alter ego Whiplash. War machine will aid Iron Man in the fight, but it is the aid of Russian spy Natalia Romanova/Black Widow that is necessary for the victory (Why? Who knows.) Eventually good guys win, bad guys lose.

That’s all that is known officially about the script. However, I have some pretty probable speculations.

Justin Hammer is another villain who makes an appearance in the second movie. Justin is owner of Hammer industries, a competitor of Stark Industries. As Whiplash is associated with Hammer industries in the comics, my guess is that in response to Tony Stark’s revelation that he was Iron Man, Justin will launch Whiplash as a marketing strategy. If whiplash can defeat Iron Man, then it would show that his company had superior engineering strategies and would bring in clientele (probably putting Stark out of business). However, the competition will be steep as War machine is a guarantee for this second film. This leads me to believe that more likely than not, we are in for a multi-villain treat. I don’t think compelling action sequences can be made around one man taking on both Stark Suits. Since there is a hoard of villains associated with Hammer Industries in the comics, it is likely that we will see another 'bad guy'.

How does black widow fit into this? My guess is that Hammer industries will be based in Russia and that the company is doing some bad stuff under the table. Black widow will be sent by the Russian government to help Tony break the case wide open and bring the company down.

Now my real concern, where does SHIELD fit into this? The plot already sounds pretty dense, the last thing I want is the mistake of bloating the sequel with quantity over quality. My hope is that the film opens with some really cool SHIELD action sequence with some random villain cameo and then SHIELD leaves the movie. That would be enough to remind us that Iron Man is involved with SHIELD (for the "Avengers" movie), but not too much that SHIELD takes over the second movie, which should be about Iron Man. Perhaps SHIELD even suspends stark for his alcohol problem early on and then re-admits him at the end when he has defeated Whiplash.
I guess we’ll see. What do you guys think?