The debacle of this film is the Mandarin. Before even re-watching Iron Man 3, I remembered the utter misuse of a classic Marvel villain who is often considered to be Iron Man’s arch-nemesis. Ben Kingsley, at first, plays the villain as he ought to be played: Brutal, callous, and horrifyingly devoid of morality. The film is even built around Tony Stark’s fear and abnormal reaction to The Mandarin which includes challenging the terrorist by giving him his home address. As a villain, the Mandarin put Tony Stark off his proverbial game.
Further into the film, The Mandarin hijacks the television airwaves in the United States. While holding a hostage and threatening to kill him, The Mandarin instructs the President of the United States to call him in order to save the hostage’s life. The President does so, but The Mandarin kills the hostage on live television anyway. This is a nasty villain who needs to be defeated. Then came the reveal…
After Tony Stark finds The Mandarin, the villain turns out to be nothing but a bumbling Keith Richards rip-off complete with stereotypical drug and alcohol abuse. This film built up a great villain, contextualized the majority of the story around his presence, and then discarded him to reveal that the true villain was Aldrich Killian played by Guy Pearce…that one guy from Memento and The Time Machine. My main question is this: Why? Why waste one of the premiere Marvel villains? Looking back the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are two villains who have any lasting impact: Loki and Thanos. Loki even eventually turns into the cool anti-hero, so there is really just one villain in Marvel that pushes the mythology in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The thesis here is that The Mandarin could have been a villain with staying power, but instead they have him drinking Budweisers while watching daytime soccer matches. What a waste of a character.
My colleague loves this film, and her explanation of how it is a growth story about Tony Stark and his maturing relationship with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) is compelling. While watching this, Sandy made excellent points throughout including how Tony’s gift-giving matured and how he admitted his obsession with his Iron Man suits. However, even that final scene with Tony destroying all of his suits in order to show his commitment to Pepper was confusing to me. All of the films that featured Tony Stark to this point in the Marvel Cinematic Universe built up Tony’s identity as it related to being Iron Man. Hell, even the famous final and celebrated line from the first film is, “The truth is, I am Iron Man.” After Iron Man 3, he is not because…I actually cannot understand that narrative choice and trying to make sense of it is fruitless. And to support this point, the Iron Man suit is back in his next appearance in Avengers: Age of Ultron. The narrative choices for Tony Stark are done away with right away in the very next movie. Maybe he shouldn’t have destroyed all of those suits.
Alex, I was also rather disappointed with The Mandarin in this movie. It was such a let down to see what ultimately happened with this character, and it's even more disappointing to have had Ben Kingsley, an amazing actor, playing a part that was ultimately disappointing. I've read Gian and Sandy's posts about how they appreciate the movie for other reasons, and I've come to see their points of view the more I watch the movie in the context of the series, but it is still not a favorite of mine and I don't think it ever will be.
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