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Since we are already talking about ladies in comic costumes, here is a Brit in a festive robe and makeup.



My guess he is the leader of the 'Ten Rings' organization that was behind the terrorists in the first movie. Has a bit of an OBL look to him come to think of it.

Nice to see that the Mandarin will be played by a white guy. Good work, Hollywood.


EDIT: Yes I know the Mandarin is half caucasian. But he's also half Chinese.

Hollywood's trying to avoid offending a certain immense market. See the Red Dawn remake.

I thought the Mandarin was the young guy from the first movie?

 Ahtman wrote:
Since we are already talking about ladies in comic costumes, here is a Brit in a festive robe and makeup.



My guess he is the leader of the 'Ten Rings' organization that was behind the terrorists in the first movie. Has a bit of an OBL look to him come to think of it.

Who's "the Mandarin?"

WTF.

 Manchu wrote:
I thought the Mandarin was the young guy from the first movie?

Yeah this? I mean, his organization was called the Ten Rings.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
I thought the Mandarin was the young guy from the first movie?

Yeah this? I mean, his organization was called the Ten Rings.

He was a member of the Ten Rings, and only had one ring. It was never stated that there were not more, or that he was the grand poobah.

China helped finance the movie, so it wasn't just Hollywood trying to avoid doing an Asian villain.


As to who the Mandarin is, he is one of IRon Man's big baddies. In the comics he has 10 magic rings (actually alien tech he learned to use) that each do something different.

 Ahtman wrote:
Since we are already talking about ladies in comic costumes, here is a Brit in a festive robe and makeup.



My guess he is the leader of the 'Ten Rings' organization that was behind the terrorists in the first movie. Has a bit of an OBL look to him come to think of it.

Isn't Sir Ben Indian?

He's British, with an Anglo mother and an Indian (by way of Africa) father.

What I mean by OBL (Osama Bin Laden) is that the general aesthetic of his face seems like they spent more time looking at pictures of a real terrorist leader than deciding to go for the more oriental, traditional Mandarin. The Mandarin was originally very much in the Fu Manch tradition of Chinese villains.

This:


Versus this.

I'd rather see an Asian villain than a white dude playing Osama bin Laden as an Asian villain.

Also, I never really understood why the Mandarin was an important Iron Man villain. It's not quite Batman v. the Joker, you know?

 Manchu wrote:
I'd rather see an Asian villain than a white dude playing Osama bin Laden as an Asian villain.

Maybe they are having him play Mandarin as a British man of Indian descent. The character is pretty obscure outside of comic book fans.

 Manchu wrote:
Also, I never really understood why the Mandarin was an important Iron Man villain. It's not quite Batman v. the Joker, you know?

I never really got it either, but then again Iron Man was always more of a comic book fan character. The average person knew next to nothing about him until Robert Downey Jr came along. He wasn't in the top of Marvels characters (Spider-Man, X-Men, Hulk) for more time then he has been at this point (Spider-Man, X-Men, Hulk). His comic did well, but it wasn't gangbusters. It has only been in the last decade that he has really taken off, and only since Iron Man 1 that his popularity has gone mainstream. Part of that reason, I believe, has been that he doesn't have a great gallery of rogues, as opposed to Spider-Man or Batman. Whiplash, Mandarin, and Crimson Dynamo just aren't as engaging as your Green Goblin, Joker, or Lex Luthor. This also might account for his ascent when his 'enemy' became Captain America during Civil War.

Iron Man vs Booze is IM's Batman vs Joker.

 Ahtman wrote:
This also might account for his ascent when his 'enemy' became Captain America during Civil War.

Good points. My only objection is that I think Mandarin is a cool character, he's just not the yin to Iron Man's yang.

 AustonT wrote:
Iron Man vs Booze is IM's Batman vs Joker.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was getting at.

Compare Tony Stark to Bruce Wayne. Bruce is a nice guy. He's rich but he treats his employees fairly, he shares his wealth, and he's generally a responsible trickle down Republican version of a rich guy.

Tony Stark is a drunk womanizer who seemingly holds less respect for others and doesn't take his job seriously. He made it among comic fans because he was an atypical comic hero (like Wolverine in many ways) but remained outside the limelight of mainstream because of his many unheroic qualities. The Byronic hero fell out awhile ago but since the mid-90's has been making a comeback in popularity, and Tony Stark has be ridding that tide.

Trailer is up.

The teaser for the trailer is up, but the actual trailer isn't supposed to be available until sometime tomorrow. Just in case I checked all the places that a trailer would show up (iTunes, Trailer Adddict, ect) and it is a no show.

 azazel the cat wrote:
Nice to see that the Mandarin will be played by a white guy. Good work, Hollywood.


EDIT: Yes I know the Mandarin is half caucasian. But he's also half Chinese.

Yeah, but which half?

I think the Mandarin's father is Chinese, but is a descendent of Genghis Khan. (That used to get played up in the comics, before it was discovered that a quarter-percent of the Earth's population shared that claim)

Anyway, Sir Ben Kingsley is not a good choice. I'd have preferred to see John Lone in the role.

It's a pretty good question, what to do with a villain who draws pretty heavily on the old Fu Manchu style villainy. I mean, not only is that stuff kind of racist, but it's also pretty goofy. I mean, put the average person in front of one of those 'evil Asian mastermind is leading a cult to steal our white women' movies, and the response is going to be mostly 'that's racist' and 'that's stupid', with no-one saying 'that's scary'.

My first guess to the problem would be just don't use the character. Move on. But that isn't how comic books work, and now it appears it isn't how comic book movies work. Everything has to be reimagined, and everything else has to be constantly re-referenced until the whole thing is one completely circular mess of constant self-reference.

So I guess the next best option is to pick a guy who's famous for playing every imaginable ethnicity other than white, and give his look a vague similarity to OBL.

From Entertainment Weekly.

Kingsley is not, of course, Chinese, but Feige says they wanted to blur the background of this version of The Mandarin. “It’s less about his specific ethnicity than the symbolism of various cultures and iconography that he perverts for his own end,” Feige says. From his samurai hair, to his royal robe, to his bin Laden-esque beard, and the AK-47 he keeps at his side, Kingsley’s interpretation is a hodgepodge of various warrior motifs.

In his attempt to rid the world of its oppressors by replacing them, The Mandarin considers himself a twisted version of absolute good.

One of the nice things about The Mandarin not being well known is that there is more room for change then with an established villain like the Joker.

Note the background.



I didn't notice the first time, but when Stane paralyzes Raza (the leader that held Stark), he takes his ring and wears it for the rest of the film. I suppose I'll have to watch it again at some point and see if this is true.

In Iron Man 2 Justin Hammer has a pinky ring he has on in every scene as well, though, again, a ring could just be a ring.

Apparently the Ten Rings were the ones that got Whiplash the fake passport and ID in Iron Man 2.

Apparently there was a poster with Fing Fang Foom on it in the original film.



Original art work for the poster:

First thought from the trailer:

"I am Gotham's reckoning"

MIND BLOWN.

 Fafnir wrote:
First thought from the trailer:

"I am Gotham's reckoning"

Yea. I guess we have to go through a bunch of movie where's the bad guy is Baneesque. Didn't see Batman. If it makes Iron Man unfunny I won't see it either. I'm there to see Robert Downey be his qwise cracking vaguely destructive self, not for a buzzkill serious O rama. I like the Holmes movies better actually.

I did notice one problem. The bad guy starts talking, rockets start flying, and all I am thinking is "why doesn't Thor and Hulk appear and just lay waste to the problem." There's no I in team people!

For the record Seven Psychopaths is awesome and awesomely funny.

Well Frazzled, they are doing there own thing, like hulk might be fighting someone else, and thor is in asgard.
But is it me, but is Number 3 for all hero movies basically "Everything goes down th tube"?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Well Frazzled, they are doing there own thing, like hulk might be fighting someone else, and thor is in asgard.
But is it me, but is Number 3 for all hero movies basically "Everything goes down th tube"?

Often

I never followed Iron Man, nor have I seen Iron Man II or The Avengers.

But that picture looks like a cool villain. I'll have to watch the trailer when I get home from work.

As I remember it from way back in the day. The Mandarin's power were majic based (I stopped reading comics when i discovered girls, so I missed the no no they are Alien tech rings not majic bit). This made the Madarin a polar opposite to Tony and his super high tech-nightudeness.

Yeah but a decade or so ago they switched tte Mandarin's powers to being alien technology rather than magic.

Back in the 60's when IM and Mandarin first appeared they kind of made it both alien AND magical. They covered their bases you could say.

When Marvel first started there were very few super-hero comics due to some of the Red scare of the 50's. When they made the Fantastic Four they had the Thing so they could say it was a Monster comic, not a Super-hero comic. They also could not wear masks.