Marvel Studios I'll be honest with you here, because I want us to have a relationship built on trust and writing this sentence helps to boost my word count: I didn't mind what they did with the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, but I can totally understand why fans of this character walked out of the theatre the day they saw the third (and perhaps final) movie in the trilogy. Watching Tony's worst nemesis reduced to an actor who was once "the toast of Croydon," is not, I imagine, what fans were expecting. If you don't know what Croydon is, you're one of the lucky ones.Although I kind of admire writer/director Shane Black's decision to shake things up a little bit with this particular character, I also can't help but feel like it would've been great to see the Mandarin played by Ben Kingsley without the mid-point twist that reveals his true nature. Up until that point, Kingsley's interpretation seemed perfect, and I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen when he faced up against Iron Man in the flesh. Alas, when it was revealed that Guy Pearce was really the Mandarin, what released that all we had was another "okay" villain.
