13 Hyped Movie Roles That Were Total Cop-Outs

9. The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) - Iron Man 3

Sticking with the MCU now, fans were extremely excited when Ben Kingsley was announced to be playing classic Iron Man villain The Mandarin in Iron Man 3.

While there was some mild hang-wringing about the antagonist being white-washed, the general consensus was that it was an attempt to bring the character out of his rather racist comic book conception and reinvent him for contemporary audiences.

The marketing did a great job selling The Mandarin as a deeply personal villain for Tony Stark (Robert Donwey Jr.), so it was enormously deflating to learn mid-way through the film that Kingsley's character was in fact an actor, Trevor Slattery, employed by the "real" Mandarin (Guy Pearce) to play a stooge version of the character.

Some praised Shane Black and co-writer Drew Pearce for subverting audience expectations, but ultimately fans really wanted to see The Mandarin done justice in the blockbuster arena, and so this just felt like a slap in the face.

The fan response was so vitriolic that Marvel Studios ended up basically ret-conning the twist in a short film, All Hail the King, where it's implied that a third, comic-accurate Mandarin is also waiting in the wings (albeit one which fans will probably never see).