Everything that we’re hearing about Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 is that the sequel wants to reset Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) back to “the cave,” that moment in the first movie when the billionaire playboy philanthropist was stripped of his comforts, humbled and forced to rely on his natural intelligence to survive. It makes sense, then, that the Marvel Studios franchise might want to bring back a vicious antagonist from Jon Favreau’s origin movie, which is what we are learning today.
Latino Review posted the following photos of an Iron Man 3 crew hat showing the Ten Rings logo that was spotted behind Stark when he was held captive by the terrorist group in the first movie. (See photo below.) The site talks about how Favreau made mention of scenes he wanted to include in Iron Man 2 hinting that the Ten Rings terrorist organization (and its leader, the Mandarin) might have been responsible for the Stark family’s misfortunes over the years.
Here are the hats:
Of course, all of this gels with the Iron Man 3 footage we were able to see during the Marvel panel in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con, where Sir Ben Kingsley was shown with the rings on his fingers in character as The Mandarin. So all of the signs seem to indicate that Stark’s world is about to be challenged by a threat he faced several years ago. And given his successes as a member of The Avengers, his ego’s probably at an all time high. The Mandarin’s about to burst his bubble, and if we can believe the crew hats, the Ten Rings are going to help.
