The Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded onto a level that was never conceived at its inception. It has grown at an unimaginable fast pace making it the biggest and most successful franchise in the modern world. This is all due to the initial success of Iron Man. But producer Jeremy Latcham has revealed in The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that the movie could have looked a lot different. The original story included a now-canceled role of the Mandarin. Read on to know the details.
Jeremy Latcham reveals that the original plan for Iron Man was quite different from what was realized on film. Mandarin was supposed to be the villain of the first film. The people at Marvel really wanted to include the primary villain of Iron Man comics as the main antagonist. This would have meant that Obidiah Stane would have been relegated to being a secondary antagonist in the movie. The original plan was to have The Mandarin dig a tunnel below the Stark tower to steal Tony’s technology. But this plan was scrapped.
The Cancelled Role Of The Mandarin
The reason for the change in plans was that the writers could not come up with a coherent script involving The Mandarin. Jeremy Latcham even calls the proposed scripts “crazy terrible” and “underwhelming”. All of this meant that they had to change the plan for the villain of the movie. The canceled role of The Mandarin gave Iron Monger a chance to take center stage. It also allowed us to see this version of Iron Man that birthed the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Who knows what would have happened if the original plan of Mandarin was enacted. Maybe we would have never had an MCU. By any measure, we would have definitely not had something like Shang-Chi making it onto film. The MCU owes its existence to Iron Man and we, for one, are glad that The Mandarin was not included. Ben Kingsley’s fakeout and Wenwu’s tyrannical reign were much better to payoffs than a one-off forgettable villain.
Let us know what you think about this canceled role of the Mandarin.
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