Kevin Feige Still Loves and Stands by IRON MAN 3's Fake Mandarin Twist

Iron Man 3 definitely isn’t the best film that Marvel has made. Yeah, it had some fun moments, but when I look back at it now, it really just kind of stands on its own. You could easily delete this film from the MCU, and it really wouldn’t affect anything.

As you know, Iron Man 3 also includes a big controversial twist. They take the opportunity to set up the big bad villain The Mandarin, with Ben Kingsley in the role. Then they reveal that he is only an actor named Trevor Slattery who was hired by Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian. I initially thought it was a funny a surprising way to go, but now I just look at it as a missed opportunity to actually see Iron Man face off with The Mandarin! I’ll be honest, I wanted to see Iron Man eventually come face to face with Fin Fang Foom.

Anyway, all of this Marvel lore is finally going to be introduced in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. In a recent interview with Rotten Tomatoes, Feige talked about Iron Man 3’s twist ending, saying that he still loves and stands by it:

And going back to Iron Man one: We’ve been talking about that when we do bring this character to the screen, [we] only wanted to do it when we felt we could do it supreme justice and really showcase the complexity of this character, which frankly we couldn’t do in an Iron Man movie because an Iron Man movie is about Iron Man; an Iron Man movie is about Tony Stark. So Shane Black, in his film and his script that he co-wrote, came up with this fun twist that we love to this day, and it turned out to be Trevor Slattery. Just because that version wasn’t real didn’t mean there’s not a leader of the Ten Rings organization, and that is who we meet for the first time in Shang-Chi.

I still think it’s a shame that we never got to see Tony Stark take on his greatest foe from the comics in the MCU. But, I’m excited to see the lore explored in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.