by Chris Vegvary
I know, I know, this comes a little late in comparison to
when the movie came out, but I need to express my side of things here. Yeah, I
liked the movie Iron Man
3. It was pretty great in a lot of ways. They adapted a bunch of stuff from
the comics and even added in some characters. Sure, they weren’t all depicted
the way they were in the source material, but sometimes that’s good.
Conversely, sometimes it’s not. Case in point: The Mandarin.
By now, you’ve probably heard all the griping on the
internet about the big “twist” in the film, where a character named “The
Mandarin,” who is responsible for a series of terrorist bombings and
hostage-killing videos, is revealed to be nothing more than an actor named
Trevor Slattery and a pawn of the “real” Mandarin, Aldritch Killian. I put the
word “real” in quotes because in no incarnation or adaptation of the source
material could I ever see this person being the “real” Mandarin.
First of all, for those of you who don’t know, The Mandarin is
Iron Man’s archnemesis in the comics. Granted, he’s based on some pretty
outdated and possibly racist material, but the way Ben Kingsley portrayed The Mandarin
(before it was revealed he was a fake) was very good. I welcomed the change.
Then the twist came, and it was all for nothing; getting us hyped about Iron Man’s biggest, baddest villain, and having Ben Kingsley play him, only to have
him be made up by someone in a higher position of power.
Making The Mandarin into a joke like that is like taking Lex
Luthor and having him be revealed to Superman as a fake character made up and
being controlled by Bizarro Superman, or something stupid like that. Seriously,
did they think people would NOT be pissed if they just made it like the
greatest enemy Tony Stark has ever had into a trick? Some of you might be
saying right now that my comparison of Lex Luthor and The Mandarin is way off,
that the two don’t compare; well, I’m here to tell you that they do. Lex Luthor
is Superman’s biggest pain, just as The Mandarin is Iron Man’s. Just because
he’s less well-known than Lex Luthor doesn’t make him any less relevant.
Here’s another tiny problem I had with the film; the scene
at the end of the credits. Most of the other movies out there set in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe (with the exception of The Avengers)
have a scene at the end of the credits, hinting at or sometimes even leading
directly into the next planned film in the series. The scene at the end of Iron Man 3 had just a bit of light
humor, and didn’t give us anything to go on for the next film (which would be Thor: The Dark World). It was simply Tony Stark laying out all his problems to Bruce Banner, who has fallen asleep listening to Tony, which causes Tony to start the movie narrative again from the very beginning. What I had heard
originally is that the end-of-credits scene would have shown Tony Stark donning
his white and gold Starboost suit (which allows for space flight and travel)
and flying off into space to meet up with the Guardians of the Galaxy. I know
things change while the creative process is ongoing, it’s just that it would
have been cool to see that. Other than that, Iron Man 3 was a pretty great film.
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