Quote:
Originally Posted by unlurking
As someone who stopped reading comic books about 20 years ago, I have no idea what "trying to fix him" means. Iron Man was never one of my favorites, but the Mandarin was one of the few villains I remember. Regardless of how he got his prominence, he is still a prime adversary.
Before seeing this I had very low expectations of the portrayal of the Silver Samurai coming up, now I have even lower. Silver Samurai is no Mandarin, but he's a character story I absolutely loved in the first solo volume of Wolverine. If Iron Man were my Wolverine, and they expected a Jackie Chan style performance (who I love BTW) for Silver Samurai, I'd never watch another movie in the series again.
It's not just about the character and how PC they are, it's about our memories of them in certain times of our lives. I'd hate to read some 50's and 60's sci-fi all PC'd up. Hell, next you'll want to remake Star Trek and have a sober Scotty or chivalrous Kirk. I'm worried enough about how there going to ruin Kahn!
If a character is "dated and vaguely racist", then create a new one. Or if you must update him for the times, do so. Don't rewrite him into something completely different. He may not be the Joker, but he sure is a hell of a lot better than the Penguin (or at least he was).
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The Penguin (the comics gentleman gangster version, not the movies sewer mutant) is a much better villain than the Mandarin. Anyway, it's not about political correctness, it's about the fact that in 2013 this:
is ****ing ridiculous. And yes, lots of comics from the 60s look ridiculous now, and most if not all of the characters that are still around have been reconceptualized for modern audiences. The way you do that is you take the essential core of the character, the thing that makes them interesting in the first place, and you build off it. The problem is that the Mandarin doesn't really have the core. That's what I meant when I said people have been trying to fix him for the past 20 years, comics writers and artists have been trying to come up with a working modern take. And, as far as I'm concerned at least, none of them have really succeeded. The Mandarin's most compelling trait continues to be the fact that he's Iron Man's archenemy. Why is he Iron Man's archenemy? No reason, he just is.
And I think that's why they used him they way they did in the movie, because his status in the minds of the fans makes the twist work. I actually really liked Ben Kingsley's performance and thought that their take on the Mandarin worked pretty well as an update of the character. But when I ask myself, would I have liked the movie better if they had just done the Mandarin as another straightforward terrorist, I don't think I would have. Killian isn't a perfect villain (his motivations could have been better thought out, for one thing) but I appreciate the genuinely surprising twist and the attempt at something different.
Basically I think a lot of the disappointment comes from a place of ignorance. I don't mean this as a dig against you or even anyone in this thread in particular, but I think a lot of people who follow this stuff casually knew the Mandarin was considered Iron Man's archenemy, but didn't actually know anything about him. They're upset because they think a great character was wasted, but they don't realize how little meat was on those bones to begin with.