15 Most Anti-Climactic Movie Showdowns

15. Iron Man Vs. "The Mandarin" - Iron Man 3

The Showdown: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) sneaks onto The Mandarin's (Ben Kingsley) Miami compound, looking to mete out revenge for the destruction of his home.

The Anti-Climax: When Stark investigates The Mandarin's bedroom, he finds two attractive young women and catches the supervillain emerging from the toilet...with a British accent.

As it turns out, Kingsley's character is an actor named Trevor Slattery who was paid by the real Mandarin, Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), to be the face of his terrorist enterprise. As such, Stark just shakes Slattery down for information at gunpoint before being knocked out by Killian's henchman Eric Savin (James Badge Dale). There's no actual fighting: that's it.

While there is a decent enough fight between Iron Man and the "actual" Mandarin later, it's hard to deny the shocking, deflating anti-climax of this first face-off, clever and rather amusing though it was (or to a legion of comic book fans, mightily frustrating).

Those hoping for a mid-film battle between the two characters, one which The Mandarin would probably win, were undoubtedly left massively underwhelmed.