10 Movies That Prove Fanboys Should Never Get What They Want

9. When They Don't Get What They Want...They Cry (A Lot) - Iron Man 3

If there's any one movie that proves that fanboys shouldn't always be pandered to, it's Iron Man 3. That movie decided to go in an unexpectedly daring direction by putting an unconventional spin on Iron Man's famed enemy The Mandarin, for when Tony Stark confronts Ben Kingsley's apparent villain, it turns out that he's a British actor called Trevor Slattery, and is essentially a decoy for the "real" Mandarin played by Guy Pearce. The switcharoo was highly controversial with comic book fanboys, who decried the movie as a desecration of one of Iron Man's most iconic characters. Now, did the fanboys have a point? Absolutely: Marvel Studios got them all excited about seeing the Mandarin faithfully depicted on screen, and then turned him into a joke, but it's the fanboy response that essentially invalidates their argument. Within hours of the movie opening worldwide, the hateful bile spilling out online became a reminder of every bad fanboy instinct: they sounded more like entitled babies throwing their toys out of the pram because the vision didn't suit their own, and you didn't have to look far to see death threats fired towards director Shane Black and writer Drew Pearce. This is the sort of behaviour that gives fanboys a bad name. Should studios placate and reward that sort of behaivour? Absolutely not, and while filmmakers shouldn't go out of their way to alienate the fanboys, there's no point endlessly pandering to them if this is their idea of an appropriate display of disapproval.