With Iron Man 3 now in production in Wilmington, North Carolina, Marvel Studios is probably pretty eager to lock the lid down and keep any more story details from coming out until much closer to the movie's May 3 release date next year. And yet, there's been a trickle of information coming out anyway, a lot of it thanks to the folks at Latino Review, who just dropped a few tidbits of information in a new post. As always, these ought to be treated as rumors for now, and that goes double for what they're saying about the movie's villain, since it goes directly against what Marvel has been saying for months.
When Ben Kingsley was first brought on to play the villain, it was with the specific denial that he was playing The Mandarin, one of the most famous villains in the Iron Man universe. But the Mandarin rumor stuck around, and Latino Review says it's for good reason-- Kingsley is indeed playing The Mandarin, but Marvel is going to continue denying it. And you won't be seeing as much of him onscreen as you might think-- Guy Pearce's scientist character Aldrich Killian will be the face of the organization that creates the Extremis virus, and Kingsley's Mandarin will be the veiled threat behind the scenes.
So, again, there's pretty much on confirming this until the movie gets closer to release-- I'm betting that when the first Iron Man 3 trailer comes out, we'll get a pretty clear sense of how Pearce's and Kingsley's villains fit into the world. But if you've been sticking to your guns believing that Kingsley really is playing the Mandarin, you've got Latino Review-- and their well-connected sources-- on your side. If I had to put my money on it, I'd say you're all right-- how else to explain all the time they'll spend filming in China this summer?
