A few days ago we brought you some comments from Shane Black about 2013’s Iron Man 3, during which he stated that Marvel nixed the idea of a female villain, and now the filmmaker has been speaking to Uproxx about the backlash to the film’s big Mandarin twist, where – SPOILERS – Ben Kingsley’s villain is actually revealed to be a drunken British actor.
“I wish that the fans liked [Iron Man 3] more,” said Black. “I’m a people pleaser. Marvel saw so many negative things they made a whole other movie just to apologize called Hail to the King. In which they said, ‘No, no, the Mandarin is still alive. That wasn’t him. There’s a real Mandarin.’ The only reason they made that was an apology to fans who were so angry.”
“They didn’t care [how I presented the Mandarin],” he continues. “But when the blowback hit, they cared. We all thought they’d eat it up because it never occurred to us the Mandarin is as iconic to people as, say, the Joker in Batman. They just wanted to see the magic rings shoot lasers. You’d need to take the piss out of it and explain how this can happen. In the comic books, it’s literally magic. It’s magic from outer space. I love the fans. I really want to please them.”
Are you still upset about the Mandarin twist in Iron Man 3, or was it the right decision? Let us know in the comments below…
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Originally published May 20, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
