4. The Ten Rings
The fake Mandarin was wearing ten rings and when the Mandarin broadcasted his messages around the globe there was a Ten Rings symbol that appeared on the television screen before the address was made but, other than that, Iron Man 3 was totally lacking in any real exploration of the Ten Rings organisation. Sure, they were supposedly behind the bombings that took place around the world (thanks to Killian's financing), but they were never deeply explored. Since the first Iron Man movie, when the organisation was responsible for Tony Stark's kidnapping in war-torn Afghanistan, movie-goers have been anticipating the Mandarin being the leader of the Ten Rings and being the big bad behind the evil plots of the previous two movies. Even the trailers for Iron Man 3 showed a close-up of the fake Mandarin wearing ten rings, leading us to believe they would be a key part of the plot of the third instalment. Sadly, that wasn't the case, and it was in fact Aldrich Killian's AIM organisation (Advanced Idea Mechanics) that were behind the creation of the Extremis virus in the movie, while the Ten Rings were comparatively only given a passing mention and were seen merely as an understudy to AIM. A bit of an anti-climax, to say the least.