Rumor: Iron Man 3 WILL introduce the Mandarin

There’s a lot of speculation as to whether or not the next Iron Man film will or will not feature the debut of Iron Man’s long awaited villain “The Mandarin”. A long time ago back when Jon Favreau was still loosely attached to the film he felt that this film HAD to feature the Mandarin as they’d been alluding to the introduction of the character throughout the first 2 films. Although none of this has been set in stone and since Shane Black has come on board there’s even more speculation that he may go in a different direction but with the film having a good portion of production taking place in China it leaves the door wide open for speculation. The film is expected to enter production soon and a few casting announcements surrounding the film have been mentioned, including Ben Kingsley, but everything is still very vague… except in the eyes of a supposed Chinese Newspaper. Comicbookmovie reports that a Chinese Newspaper has let the cat out of the bag about the films synopsis and villain:

The film will have location shooting in Beijing and Shanghai, it will narrates that the daughter of Robert Downey Jr.’s friend was kidnapped and brought to China, in order to save his friend’s daughter, he flew over from America to China to seek help from Andy to strengthen his abilities to fight The Mandarin. You will see Iron Man fly over The Great Wall of China, National Palace Museum & other landmarks in Shanghai May 2013

I don’t see why Disney and Marvel would be so secretive about this other than to fan fuel flames and allow sites like this one to further promote their film into financial success as we run around like chickens without heads guessing what it is they’re going to do. Ok, I can see clearly now that I’ve typed and re-read what I just said. It makes perfect sense.

Anyway, if the film DIDN’T feature the Mandarin what other Chinese villains are there for Iron Man to battle? Fing Fang Foom?! Wait… that would be pretty awesome! But we’ve already seen Iron Man battle giant flying thingies like that in the Avengers what could a giant dragon bring to the table that’s unique? Although Fing Fang Foom is also linked to the Mandarin… Let the speculation continue…

Source: Comic Book Movie