Iron Man 3: The Spoilers

WARNING!! This blog contains huge spoilers! If you haven't see Iron Man 3 yet read no further...

Since you have watched Iron Man 3 you'll realise that this blog will focus on the film's big twist, which is the reveal that The Mandarin doesn't actually exist and was character created by Aldrich Killian to cover up the flaws from his Extremis, which causes tragic attacks.  So the man dressed as the Mandarin is actually a drunk method actor called Trevor Slattery.

When this was revealed in the film I had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand the build up and hype towards seeing Iron Man's biggest foe had now faded but on the other hand it was ingenious as we as an audience did not see it coming.  Once Killian explained why the Mandarin was a fictional character the more visible and clever the twist became and it actually added something to the film's story. The previous two Iron Man films had a simple and basic narrative and entertained more than shocked its audience whilst this does both.  I can honestly say this is possibly the greatest twist I have seen since M Night Shyamalon's The Sixth Sense. In a way I find this to be better than twists such as The Sixth Sense and Fight Club because those two films gave subtle hints of one approaching while Iron Man 3's didn't, nobody saw it coming.

I have been reading comments from Marvel purests on the Internet and many have been negative about this. A few have even stated that they have turned Iron Man's biggest enemy into a joke. I see where they are coming from but what they seem to be forgetting is that Ben Kingsley was never the Mandarin, Guy Pearce's Killian was.  Though we knew by his presence that Killian was going to be a villain it came across as though he'd be the sub-villian, he was The Mandarin's puppet but it was actually vice versa. The fact they focused more on the Mandarin more than Killian in the trailers was a clever technique in getting the audience side tracked, they were focusing more on Kinglsey's character rather than Pearce's.  When Pearce appeared in the film I had almost forgotten that he was in it in the first place.

This twist proves that the studio are attempting to make their Marvel films more and more clever and interesting.  The writers have definitely upped their game and I do hope more clever plot devices such as this will be coming in the next films in the 'Phase 2' series