Iron Man Never Got to Fight His Joker in the MCU

Summary

• Iron Man’s journey from B-list hero to iconic superhero was led by director Favreau and actor Downey Jr. in the birth of the MCU.
• The Mandarin, Iron Man’s archenemy, finally appeared in Shang-Chi, tying to Fu Manchu, but both heroes are now deceased in the current MCU.
• Early plans for The Mandarin were ultimately changed in Iron Man 3, with a bold narrative twist on the classic comic book villain’s character.

It is hard to believe it’s been nearly 16 years since Iron Man hit theaters and kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel Studios took a B-list hero and made him one of the biggest superheroes in the world thanks to the combined talents of director Jon Favreau’s unique vision and the inspired choice to cast Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. Iron Man became one of the biggest movies of 2008 and also served as the beginning of what would become the biggest franchise in movie history, where Downey Jr. would appear as Iron Man in 10 movies over 11 years.

The MCU films saw Iron Man face off against many iconic villains, including Loki, Ultron, and Thanos, while adapting some of his most iconic storylines from the comics, like “Demon in the Bottle,” “Extremis” and “Civil War.” Yet Iron Man never got to face off against his arch enemy, the Joker, to his Batman: The Mandarin.

While a version of The Mandarin did appear in Iron Man 3, it was merely a decoy for the true villain, Aldrich Killian. At first, it did not appear that there was a “real” Mandarin in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the short All Hail the King in 2014 established one did exist. Then, in 2021, the character was brought into the MCU in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, drastically reworked. By this point, though, Iron Man was dead in the MCU.

Here is the Mandarin and Iron Man’s history, past attempts to bring the villain to the big screen, why Marvel finally did, and if there is ever a way for the two enemies to meet now that both are deceased within the MCU canon.

The Mandarin Comic Book History

Created by Stan Lee and Don Heck, The Mandarin was designed as a Fu Manchu-type villain. Fu Manchu was a supervillain who was introduced in a series of novels by the English author Sax Rohmer that ran for about forty years. He became both an archetype but was also a racist stereotype that portrayed Chinese individuals as threats to Western society. Fu Manchu and The Mandarin will come back into play a little later, but for now, this lays a foundation where the two characters are linked, which both serve to Marvel’s advantage but also hurt them in some respects.

The Mandarin in the comics is a genius scientist and martial artist, but he is primarily known for wielding ten power rings that he wears on his fingers. These rings are alien technology that the Mandarin discovered from a crashed ship, and each ring gave him a variety of powers. Because most of Iron Man’s enemies, like Titanium Man, Crimson Dynamo, and Iron Monger, were all armored characters, it helped The Mandarin stand out and become Iron Man’s arch nemesis the way Captain America had Red Skull or Thor had Loki.

The Mandarin and Iron Man were linked. When Iron Man was primed to get the big screen treatment, it seemed obvious that he would be the main villain as it was tradition to have the hero’s arch-enemy as the movie’s first villain. Lex Luthor was in Superman: The Movie, The Joker was in Batman, and Green Goblin was in Spider-Man. The Mandarin would be a hard character to crack.

Early Plans for The Mandarin in the MCU

When Jon Favreau began production on Iron Man, The Mandarin was meant to be the film’s primary villain. Marvel Studios clearly thought The Mandarin would be the main villain for Iron Man, which is why a lot of Iron Man media that was greenlighted before the film coincided with the release had a lot of Mandarin. He appeared as a villain in 2006’s Marvel Ultimate Alliance video game. 2007’s animated film, The Invincible Iron Man, featured The Mandarin as the main villain and is now reimagined as an ancient ruler of a vicious Chinese dynasty who acts as a vengeful spirit when his rings are reunited years later.

However, early on, the filmmakers opted to cut the alien rings as they were deemed too fantastical for the grounded take Favreau wanted for the film. He would have been reimagined as a rival to Tony Stark with a building of his own right next to Stark Industries. The Mandarin would drill a hole underneath Stark Industries to steal all of Stark’s technology for himself. It was clear that The Mandarin as the villain was not working, and when Jeff Bridges was cast as Obadiah Stane, the decision was made to make Stane the main villain, keeping the plot of him stealing Tony’s technology but now being from an inside force with Stark Industries.

This changed the Iron Man franchise. Originally, Obadiah Stane was set up to become a villain in the sequel, but with The Mandarin now gone, Jon Favreau decided to build up to The Mandarin. The idea was that The Mandarin would be similar to The Emperor in Star Wars, operating behind the scenes and coming face-to-face with Iron Man in a later film that could possibly lean more into otherworldly comic book elements.

The Mandarin’s presence would be felt in Iron Man by naming the terrorist organization that kidnapped Tony Stark’s The Ten Rings, a reference to the Mandarin’s signature weapon. The Mandarin was kept out of Iron Man 2, but following The Avengers introducing aliens, gods, and other superheroes to Tony Stark’s orbit, the stage was set for The Mandarin. Yet, it would be very different from what was originally intended.

Iron Man 3 Tries To Split The Difference With The Mandarin

In Iron Man 3Ben Kingsley was cast as The Mandarin, and the trailers for the films leaned heavily on this new villain, a dark, looming presence. While he might not have had the magic rings like his comic book counterparts, the trailers sold a reimagined take on the character, moving him from a Chinese wizard to the ultimate embodiment of terrorism in a post-9/11 world. One who released targeted attacks and symbolic videos spewing terrorist ideology and tapping into Americans’ fears of the Middle East. It all seemed so calculated, or as Tony Stark puts it in the movie, “a lot of pageantry going on here.” It turned out that is the point.

Midway through the film, it is revealed that the Mandarin that audiences have been watching is not real. The person on screen was a drunken British theater actor named Trevor Slattery (in one of Kingsley’s funniest roles). In fact, The Mandarin is a persona created by a think tank, one to sell the idea of a terrorist, while the real mastermind, a military contractor, works from the shadows, fanning the flames of fear to increase his own pocketbook.

All the “speeches” are reverse-engineered, covering up unplanned bombs and forming a narrative around them to make each one feel especially targeted instead of a random act. It was both a satire on the military-industrial complex and also a meta-commentary on the nature of screenwriters “crafting” a villain like the Mandarin, pulling from so many forms of inspiration where it all feels tailored and not natural.

This was a bold move. While some loved the clever subversion of the character and the funny, pointed commentary, others were disappointed because the marketing might have done too good a job of selling Kinsley’s Mandarin as a real threat they wanted to see fight Iron Man. The movie does still try to give Tony Stark a “Mandarin” to fight with the revelation that Aldrich Killian, the man behind everything, is a true Mandarin and making him a twisted mirror of Tony Stark to highlight Aldrich as his true arch enemy, but there is the problematic nature of trying to take the identity of a prominent Asian character and give it to a white guy.

Shang-Chi Gave Marvel An Opportunity To Solve Two Major Problems

Shang-Chi was created by writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin, debuting in Special Marvel Edition #15 in December 1973. Marvel had just acquired the rights to Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu character and decided to make him part of Shang-Chi’s backstory as the previously unknown son of a pulp villain, and Shang-Chi was trained to be the deadliest man in the world. While Shang-Chi would continue to be part of the Marvel Universe for years, Marvel would lose the rights to Fu Manchu, and Marvel would remain cryptic or use aliases for Shang-Chi’s father to get around the rights issue. Ed Brubaker would retcon Shang-Chi’s origin in 2010, revealing that his father was, in fact, Zheng Zu and that “Fu Machu” was an alias.

In 2018, Marvel Studios officially began developing a Shang-Chi movie, and at San Diego Comic-Con 2019, they officially confirmed the movie would be titled Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. They decided to have The Mandarin, one teased since the first Iron Man and set up in All Hail the King, to fill the role of Shang-Chi’s evil villain father, who originated as Fu-Manchu. Since The Mandarin was originally meant as a Fu-Manchu-type character, it seemed to work perfectly, as it allowed Marvel to bring in one of their most iconic villains and tie one of their new heroes with the film that started the franchise. It all seemed to fit perfectly.

However, the MCU still needed to make some drastic changes. Bringing on a predominantly Asian creative team and cast allowed them to rework the character into less of a stereotype. Here, the title “The Mandarin” is dropped, and the movie even makes fun of the fact of naming an Asian villain. Now, his name is Wenwu, an ancient warlord who had been operating in the shadows of the MCU for years, and the Ten Rings was a bigger organization than seen in the first Iron Man. It also tied in with the plot of Iron Man 3 of Wenwu, commenting on how Aldrich Killian co-opted his image and organization. The film also brought back Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery, having been kept as Wenwu’s prisoner since the events of All Hail the King, which would be about ten years.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings killed off Wenwu, meaning both Iron Man and his comic book arch-nemesis are gone. This means that fans might never see these two comic book characters share the screen together. But anything is possible in the multiverse.