8. The Mandarin Twist - Iron Man 3
It evidently didn't bother that many people considering how much money the film has made, but one of the most disappointing comic book movie moments of the year for me has to be the twist reveal with The Mandarin. We spend the first act of the film exhilarated at The Mandarin's (Ben Kingsley) fierce streak of terror, particularly when he blows Tony Stark's home to smithereens and leaves him for dead, but at the mid-way point, Shane Black makes a very ill-advised decision to toy with comic fans the world over. In the end, it transpires that Kingsley's character is just an actor employed by the
real Mandarin - played by Guy Pearce but in no way resembling the comic book version of the character - to give him a recognisable name and face while he manages to still go about his daily life undetected. While it
did subvert expectations, it wasn't in a pleasantly surprising way; instead, it just proved infuriating given what the trailer promised to give us.