The highly anticipated sequel to 2012’s The Avengers is currently in production, shooting in London, South Korea, and Italy. Rather than the ultra-secrecy one might expect for these types of products, production photos and videos have been flooding the internet over the past few days, including thank you videos from Joss Whedon (writer/director) and Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) to the people of Seoul, South Korea.
In addition, set photos of Ultron, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, and Captain America have leaked, showing off new costumes for the new and old characters alike. I’ll put links to them here, here, and here, so those who would rather not be spoiled don’t have to be.
This past week, Thor: The Dark World was released on BluRay and DVD, premiering tons of new bonus content from the Marvel Universe. One such item of bonus content was the one-shot “All Hail the King,” a continuation of last year’s Iron Man 3. These short Marvel films have been included as bonus content on the DVD releases since 2011’s Thor, which premiered the light-hearted “The Consultant,” a follow-up to both The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man. Since then, four new one-shots have been released with each of the new Marvel movies, including “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer,” “Item 47” (which spawned the ABC Television show “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”), “Agent Carter” (also rumored to have sparked a television show), and “All Hail the King.” Watch a clip from the short below:
This newest one-shot, following Iron Man 3’s hoax villain Trevor Slattery during his time in prison, is particularly interesting because of what it might mean for the future of the universe.
[Warning: SPOILERS below for those who have not seen Iron Man 3 or this newest Marvel one-shot.]
Ready? Okay.
Trevor, enjoying his celebrity status in prison, is being interviewed about his time posing as The Mandarin while in the employ of AIM. About halfway through the short, the interviewer stops to tell Trevor about the real Ten Rings terrorist group and their leader, the Mandarin King. Trevor is oblivious, but the interviewer starts to assemble a gun, revealing a tattoo of… the Ten Rings! The same terrorist group that kidnapped Tony Stark back in the first Iron Man movie. Trevor finds himself, at the end of the short, with a gun to his head being told to prepare to meet the man whose name he stole.
Does that mean that the Mandarin, the mystical, rings-wielding, archnemesis-of-Iron-Man version, actually exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? It looks like it. Will we meet him in a future film? That’s harder to tell. These one-shots seem to be pushing towards television shows, but I can’t imagine Ben Kingsley or Robert Downey, Jr. starring in a network television dramedy. And with RDJ’s most recent contract only keeping him around for two more Avengers movies, I’m not sure we’ll see the Mandarin on the big screen anytime soon either.
It could be that this is just an attempt from Marvel to clear what has been considered by many fanboys “the biggest wrong” the Marvel Cinematic Universe has done them. With the bait-and-switch reveal of the “fake” Mandarin, they want to know there’s a real one out there. This could just be the MCU’s attempt to leave the existence of the Mandarin up to personal interpretation, thus satisfying the fanboys and fangirls still angry that they had the wool pulled over their eyes.
What do you think? Will we ever see the “real” Mandarin on the screen? And if you haven’t, go check out Thor: The Dark World on DVD!
