Re: the Mandarin being a fake thing: Okay, so (a) I very assiduously avoided spoilers before seeing the movie, as usual, and (b) I am only familiar with most of Marvel comics canon via osmosis, so I went into this movie having pretty much *no idea* who the Mandarin was except the vague awareness that he was a villain who existed.
So when we first see Ben Kingsley coming in to what was (to me) extremely obviously a film set, and Guy Pearce standing around looking all smug while everyone else was freaking out, I swear that the first thing I thought was, "Oh, I bet he's totally just an actor and Guy Pearce is really the Mandarin." And then I turned out to be right and I was like, "Ha, called it!"
And it wasn't until I started looking at the IM3 stuff on the Internet afterwards that I even realized that this was, like, a BIG DEAL, that the Mandarin wasn't the Mandarin. Because as far as I was concerned, this had totally been set up earlier in the movie when Tony comments on how the Mandarin's accent was all wrong and so forth. I guess it's just interesting, because I didn't have the preconceived notion that the Mandarin was really real and so I didn't ignore the foreshadowing the movie provided.
I was also incredibly *relieved* to find out I was right, because up to that point I was starting to get seriously uncomfortable with the implied endorsement of American racism/xenophobia the Mandarin's shtick seemed to be supporting. To find out it was a deliberate play on (and actually an explicit *indictment* of) that xenophobia, both by Guy Pearce's character and by the movie itself, was both brilliant and faith-restoring. So well done, IM3. Way to have your comics canon cake and yet not repeat the previous chefs' mistakes in serving it.
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So when we first see Ben Kingsley coming in to what was (to me) extremely obviously a film set, and Guy Pearce standing around looking all smug while everyone else was freaking out, I swear that the first thing I thought was, "Oh, I bet he's totally just an actor and Guy Pearce is really the Mandarin." And then I turned out to be right and I was like, "Ha, called it!"
And it wasn't until I started looking at the IM3 stuff on the Internet afterwards that I even realized that this was, like, a BIG DEAL, that the Mandarin wasn't the Mandarin. Because as far as I was concerned, this had totally been set up earlier in the movie when Tony comments on how the Mandarin's accent was all wrong and so forth. I guess it's just interesting, because I didn't have the preconceived notion that the Mandarin was really real and so I didn't ignore the foreshadowing the movie provided.
I was also incredibly *relieved* to find out I was right, because up to that point I was starting to get seriously uncomfortable with the implied endorsement of American racism/xenophobia the Mandarin's shtick seemed to be supporting. To find out it was a deliberate play on (and actually an explicit *indictment* of) that xenophobia, both by Guy Pearce's character and by the movie itself, was both brilliant and faith-restoring. So well done, IM3. Way to have your comics canon cake and yet not repeat the previous chefs' mistakes in serving it.