'Iron Man' Nearly Had A Very Different Villain

Iron Man will celebrate its ten-year anniversary in 2018, but fans haven't learned all of the film's secrets just yet. During a recent interview with Uproxx, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige opened up about the film, and the producer confirmed Iron Man was supposed to focus on a very different villain.

When Feige was asked about Iron Monger's death in the film, the producer said the baddie came to such a fate after Marvel chose to make Obadiah Stane the film's lead villain rather than the Mandarin.

"As you may recall, when he was hired, he was a secondary villain to the Mandarin," Feige said, nodding to Stane's ties with the Ten Rings organization.

"As we were prepping the movie we realized we didn't want to do the Mandarin in that movie," the producer admitted. "When we took him out and made Obadiah the lead villain, Iron Man became what Iron Man became. But what was required is that Iron Monger [Obadiah Stane] had to go down into that arc reactor."

Fans know the Mandarin did get his due with the Iron Man films, but the villain's entrance isn't what fans had expected. Iron Man 3 did a switch-a-roo with the baddie that surprise most and rubbed a handful of die-hard fans the wrong way. There is no telling how Iron Man would have gone if the Mandarin did fit into it as a main villain, but fans can only assume it would have felt rushed. The antagonist has enough going on by himself to fill a film; If you added that onto Iron Man's burgeoning origin, things could get messy rather quickly.

Since the Mandarin was saved from appearing in Iron Man, Obadiah was left to shoulder the film's villainous burden. The arms dealer seemed to have died for his troubles, but Marvel Studios didn't always plan for Jeff Bridges' character to bite the dust. In an interview earlier this year, the actor confessed the MCU's inaugural film was supposed to make Iron Monger's fate more open-ended.

"In the original script they were supposed to open my suit after, and I was gone! But then, no," Bridges said in an interview with CinemaBlend. "I read the scene we were shooting, and they said, 'No, you're dead.' And I said, 'Oh…' Then they said, 'Well, it's a comic! Maybe you'll come back!' I don't know."