10 Things The MCU Wishes It Could've Done Differently

10. Made The Mandarin Situation Less Confusing

Despite All Hail The King making a valiant attempt to clear this issue up, the whole Mandarin situation wasn't really handled as clearly as it could have been.

We met who we thought was the Mandarin in the trailers for Iron Man 3, but the film revealed that he was just an actor playing pretend. Later, Aldrich Killian stated that he was the real Mandarin, before short film All Hail The King shot down that idea by revealing that proper (presumably comic-book accurate) Mandarin was still out there somewhere, lurking in the shadows. Keeping up?

All Hail The King is definitely worth a watch, but all it did was muddy the waters by directly contradicting Killian's earlier claim to the Mandarin title: it felt like Feige was just making it up as he went along, with no real plan for the character. Plus, since most moviegoers won't have even seen All Hail The King, a lot of casual viewers will still think that Killian was the real Mandarin, clueless as to what's actually going on.

Marvel Studios could've saved fans a lot of confusion if they had just simplified this whole thing. How about not having Killian say he was the Mandarin, or how about never making All Hail The King in the first place? Both of these things are unnecessary for Iron Man 3's story to function, and would have allowed the initial backlash against Trevor Slattery to blow over within a few years, as it (mostly) has done.

Instead, by bringing up the real Mandarin, Marvel Studios has placed a lot of pressure on its shoulders, and is now almost obligated to deliver a "proper" version of the character at some point. And that obligation will restrict their creative freedom.