6. Villains Using Parlor Tricks
When Bruce Wayne thought he met Ra's al Ghul in
Batman Begins, he found the League of Shadows leader (Ken Watanabe) seated on a throne, adorned in fancy robes. Bruce's mentor, Ducard (Liam Neeson), even answered to the man on the throne, appearing to be a devoted disciple. In the end, it was all a "cheap parlor trick" to disguise the fact that Ducard was the real Ra's al Ghul. In
Iron Man 3, Tony Stark and rest of the world thought the Mandarin was the long-bearded man (Ben Kingsley) making threats and pointing out American hypocrisy on television. After all, he looked like a stereotypical terrorist. To the chagrin of many comic book fans, though, this character was not the Mandarin; he was a washed up, drug addicted actor. Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) was the real Mandarin, pulling all the strings behind a shield of anonymity. The Ducard surprise was ruined for many when the script for
Batman Begins leaked a week or so before the film's release, but the Mandarin twist caught almost everyone off guard. Still, one could make a very strong case that these two switcheroos are the biggest surprises in the history of the genre. It's hard to create a sense of mystery when fans generally know who the bad guy is based on the comics, so it is a credit to each film for finding a clever way around the audience's expectations. There are, however, some interesting social issues raised by the construction of these reveals. In each case, a non-white character from the comics was originally shown to be portrayed as non-white on film, only for a white actor to be the villain all along. Given the predominantly white casting of these films (because the characters are predominantly white), this is a valid concern to be raised. To be fair, Ra's al Ghul's racial background is not completely clear in the comics and the Mandarin, a Chinese character in the source material, was never shown to be Chinese at all in
Iron Man 3. If one ever has the opportunity to ask Shane Black, it would be interesting to know if Killian's design of the Mandarin fitting the mold of what a white person believes a terrorist would look like is a commentary on a white comic book writer and a white artist creating the Mandarin based on racially offensive Chinese stereotypes. Social questions aside, these are both great surprises and risks like these should be taken more often. That said, it would be nice to see studios and directors take risks that actually expand casting diversity in superhero films.