Definitely one of the most controversial changes that a film has made from the pages of a comic has been the portrayal of Iron Man's arch nemesis the Mandarin in Shane Black's threequel. While the change described in the last entry (Tony revealing himself as the real Iron Man) also came largely as a complete surprise to the audience and a shift from the character's traditional comic identity, it was met with an almost universally positive response. The same cannot be said of the Mandarin, but if anything this is a bolder, smarter and more justified adaptation from its source. In a climate in which film fans consistently lament the fact that trailers, reviews and internet gossip spoil films, leaving their twists and turns predictable and lacking in punch, Black's rug pulling moment in which the Mandarin, built up as a nightmarish super-terrorist, turns out to be a bumbling luvvie actor is one that was entirely unexpected and provided a whiplash fast change in tone. Yes, it may disappoint fans expecting the darker, more serious sequel that was advertised to have it turn into the kind of knowing fun for which Black made his name, but a blockbuster that confounds expectations is a rare and wonderful thing. More than this, though, by making the sinister exotic terrorist version of the Mandarin entirely an act put on by an old British actor, Iron Man 3 was able both to comment and build on audience expectations for this type of villain and creatively utilise a character that was a distressingly racist riff on the dodgy Orientalism of the Fu Manchu archetype even when the Mandarin was created in the 1960s. The Mandarin's promotional films work within the movie for just the same reason that Iron Man 3's own trailers were able to sell the character - because his mishmash of exotic iconography was designed to recall various racially dubious signifiers of a threatening "other" and powerful if technologically inferior criminal mastermind. Real villain Aldrich Killian constructs a monster that plays on his audience's fears, even though he's clearly a white British actor surrounded by a mix of signifiers from various backgrounds, just as a filmmaker might. By revealing the trick of it, Black may reduce an element of his movie to a post-modern joke, but it's a very clever and, crucially, very entertaining one that also allows twenty-first century film to play around with a dated and problematic character. Now if only somebody can work out a way to fit Fin Fang Foom into a functioning movie narrative in the same way.
