And Now The Mandarin Character Poster For Iron Man 3

[Brendon Connelly]

So much for my suspicions that the Iron Man 3 character posters would work as piece of a larger picture. This one breaks the patterns entirely. It also pretty much breaks the fourth wall. Stop staring at me.



Note how all of the trappings have Chinese roots? That's interesting. The Mandarin really didn't seem one half as Mandarin in the trailers. There's been a similar image of him released before, though - see below. There's definitely a "Mandarin message" they're trying to get across. With or without glasses, with or without Chinese stylings.



The poster premiered at Empire.

[Michael Moran]

Disappointed and shocked that it doesn't say SIR Ben Kingsley

[Russell Fox]

The first poster was Stark in freefall, so only the last two posters would've worked together anyway, right?

Also, I look at this poster and think "The Dictator 2". I think it's the shades.

[OwningXylophone]

What is wrong with the finger he is resting on his head? It kinda looks a little phallic!

[Ganymede]

What is wrong with the finger he is resting on his head? It kinda looks a little phallic!

Sometimes a finger is just a finger.

[OwningXylophone]

Sometimes a finger is just a finger.

The close up shot of his face on the Marvel website solves this, it's the top of his ear poking up behind the tip of his finger and his fingernail that gives that bulbous effect to the tip, which was what made me say that in the first place.

[Peter J Poole]

Part of me still keeps wondering if Sir Ben learnt nothing from Thunderbirds....

thunderbirds_wideweb__430x279.jpg

Still looking forward to the movie though...

Cheers

[StarCruncher]

What's with all the rings on his fingers? Is he copying Hal Jordan as Parallax?!!?

[Matt Krotzer]

I love the poster, though I still find it curious that for The Mandarin, we couldn't find any actors of Chinese descent, and had to go with a British actor, even if it's a great actor like Sir Kingsley.

[Knut Robert Knutsen]

Well, first of all if we're discussing ethnicity, it would be British/Indian as opposed to Chinese. Not simply British.

Maybe it's just me, but framing it as a "white british guy in make up" playing chinese sounds a lot more problematic than having an indian guy play chinese.

Also, there's something so over the top stereotypically "chinese" in both the name and the look of the Mandarin (Let's face it, he's Fu Manchu, the Yellow Peril) that just about the only way they'd get away with it is by saying he isn't actually chinese (or that he's only half chinese) and the name and look is an affectation. Imagine Chow Yun Fat, Jackie Chan, Jet Li or any of a dozen great chinese actors in that role and I'm convinced you'd find the stereotype both dated and grating.

If they'd hired a chinese actor, the Mandarin would be wearing Armani. Which could work, I'm not saying it wouldn't.

But I'm sure a lot of very smart people have spent a lot of time looking at the comics version of the Mandarin going: "How are we going to make sure that this can't be misinterpreted as a racist caricature?". Because we all know that there are a lot of people with no comics background that are not willing to give this the benefit of the doubt. Just like we comics fans ignore a lot of potentially offensive stuff in comics by giving it a benefit of the doubt that I'm not sure it entirely deserves.