8. The Decoy Villain
Appears In: Batman Begins & Iron Man 3 We spend the first act of Batman Begins believing that the League of Shadows' leader, Ra's al Ghul, is in fact played by Ken Watanabe, before it's revealed that Liam Neeson's Ducard is the man's real identity. Likewise, we spend roughly half of Iron Man 3 believing that The Mandarin is played by Ben Kingsley, before he's outed as a silly comic relief aside, and Guy Pearce's Aldrich Killian is the "real" Mandarin. While this has been employed relatively unpredictably so far, it's not so much a problem because it's trite, but simply because it misleads viewers. While the deception in Begins was fine, Iron Man 3 had devoted so much of its marketing campaign to bigging up Kingsley as Tony Stark's most fearsome foe yet, that then for it to just pull a 180 and make him a complete joke just blew the wind out of the film's sails. Furthermore, it took a dump from a great height on comic book fans who wanted to see a faithful adaptation of one of Iron Man's classic comic book foes...