Ranking Marvel’s Phase 2

4)  Iron Man 3 – This is certainly the most divisive movie in Marvel’s eleven movie canon, and for good reason.  The majority of non-comic fans bemoaned Trevor Slattery’s deconstruction of the Mandarin as a waste of a good villain.  Those more familiar with Iron Man‘s publication history hated the fact that the character’s one good villain was reduced to a punch-line.  And while his defenders pointed out how intelligently handled, unexpected and confident the twist was handled, they could hardly get a word in edgewise over the uproar.

When it comes to the Mandarin controversy, I belong firmly to the “yea” camp.  It was intelligent.  It was bold.  It was unexpected, and yet I never felt cheated by it.  It gave this small cross-section of the MCU something that it had lacked since the first movie’s second act: actual depth.

I would further argue that the reveal didn’t close off quite as many options with the franchise as people want to believe.  The one-shot “All Hail the King” established an actual, factual, magical Mandarin who was tired of Slattery slandering his “good” name.  If we do get an Iron Man 4, we could very well see the “real” Mandarin turn everything that we thought we knew about the MCU on its head.  Or Iron Man 3, in retrospect, could be viewed as a Mandarin origin story: how Trevor Slattery went from being a drug addict actor to a hardened criminal, to the protege of a true villain.  The potential is all there, so long as Downey’s still willing to throw on the suit.