10 Biggest Controversies In The Marvel Cinematic Universe
3. The Mandarin Twist
Iron Man 3's Mandarin reveal might be the single most controversial moment in any comic-book movie, ever.
By all accounts, the trailers (and the first half of the film) painted Ben Kingsley's Mandarin as the real deal, and his look and style was close enough to his comic-book counterpart that fans were generally pleased with this version of the character.
And then... it happened. Midway through the movie it's revealed that Kingsley isn't playing The Mandarin but is actually an actor by the name of Trevor Slattery, a guy who's pretending to be the Mandarin at the behest of Guy Pearce's Aldrich Killian.
Fans. Were. Outraged.
To comic-book purists, it looked like Marvel was essentially flipping the bird to decades of comic-book history, reducing Iron Man's greatest adversary to nothing more than a punchline, a cheap marketing trick used to fool the audience and subvert expectations for no other reason than "because they could."
It really is easy to understand the hate. Imagine if someone took one of your favourite characters and turned them into a joke? Many pointed out that Marvel didn't have to use the Mandarin name - they could have called this villain literally anything - and saved a proper portrayal of the character for another movie.
All Hail The King - the Marvel One-Shot - did reveal that the real Mandarin was still out there somewhere, but this felt like the studio were just covering their own backs. They have no intention of bringing the Mandarin back; they were just doing the best they could to halt the flow of anger they received from fans.