2. Ensure That Your Villain Has A Clear Motivation
On the whole, I thought that Killian/The Mandarin's motivations were way to muddled and confused for much of the movie, and that's because - simply put - they were. We know that Killian ultimately wanted to control both the President of the United States and his own Mandarin-led terrorist group via a decoy (Ben Kingsley), but why? His motivations aren't ever really laid out on the table in a way that makes sense to us. Sure, we understand what his plan is and what he's trying to do, but not what achieving it
means to the guy. And things get a bit lost in the process of all this, because (like Bane in the
Dark Knight Rises) we never really get a sense of purpose that we can go along with/root against. In the case of
Iron Man 3, there's a lot of plot to distract you, but it's actually pretty thin going when you lay it out flat and try to piece it all together. That's to say, if your villain is planning on doing something, ensure that there's a reason for them to be doing it. There's nothing worse than a script with a character who ends up doing things for the the sake of it, or to cause problems for your protagonist, despite the fact that there's nothing in it for them. If you conjure up an extremely complicated plan (like the one here), it has to work for your villain as a human being. This is a
person, and given the information you establish, they need to totally believe in what they're doing (whilst it really helps if we totally understand why they did what they did, at least by the end of the movie). In this case, Killian - who could have been a far more interesting character had they shown us more of his personality - is diluted by the fact that he simply wants to control the President and, uh... well, I'm not sure what else he wants to do. As Tony Stark's evil mirror image and a scientist of incredible talent and ability, that just seems so dated and lame. I never had a clear grasp on Killian's motivations, and he's rather forgettable as a result. At a time when villains are arguably more popular than heroes, that's a mistake you can't afford to make.