I'd love to see Howard cut just for consistency sake. -maybe Cheadle footage from elsewhere could work? His character on House of Lies spends a lot of time on the phone which might work...but also spends a lot of time swearing which wouldvbe out of character for Rhodey.

Are you keeping Jeff Bridges as an antagonist?

If you can imply that Tony gave the suit to Rhodes then go with it. It never sat right with me the way he took it, and the party scene in general was pretty weak.

in terms of timeline - just go with what is interesting. IM1 jumped around a bit and deleted scenes show that Avengers was going to start by showing the aftermath of the battle.