Ben Kingley's Mandarin is back! The latest Marvel One-shot "All Hail The King" will provide a follow-up to Iron Man 3 regarding the fate of Trevor Slattery aka The Mandarin.
According to Entertainment Weekly, the Marvel One-Shot will be fourteen minutes in length, and it was written and directed by Drew Pearce the writer of Iron Man 3, who had hinted about Ben Kingley's return as the Mandarin on his twitter. The short is being described as an epilogue to Iron Man 3 and possibly, a prologue to Iron Man 4. As far as the subject matter of "All Hail The King," Pearce said, "Imagine a real terrorist organization whose beliefs were long held and religious for thousands of years, and imagine a drunk, British actor coming along and essentially telling the world that he's the face of your organization. I think they would be right to be quite angry."
Ben Kingley's Mandarin has been a controversial topic for the fans as the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 is very much different from the Mandarin in comics. Many fans saw the change as a butchering of the character while some fans argue the change was for the better.
Iron Man 3 Director Shane Black, on an interview with screenrant, had this to say regarding their different interpretation of the Mandarin.
"I would say that we struggled to find a way to present a mythic terrorist that had something about him that registered after the movie's over as having been a unique take, or a clever idea, or a way to say something of use. And what was of use about the Mandarin's portrayal in this movie, to me, is that it offers up a way that you can sort of show how people are complicit in being frightened. They buy into things in the way that the audience for this movie buys into it. And hopefully, by the end you're like, 'Yeah, we were really frightened of the Mandarin, but in the end he really wasn't that bad after all.' In fact, the whole thing was just a product of this anonymous, behind-the-scenes guy. I think that's a message that's more interesting for the modern world because I think there's a lot of behind-the-scenes, a lot of fear, that's generated toward very available and obvious targets, which could perhaps be directed more intelligently at what's behind them."
Marvel One-Shot "All Hail The King" will be included on the "Thor: Dark World" Blu-ray which will be released on February 25.