Shang-Chi Writer Speaks Out on Fixing Iron Man 3 Mistakes With the Mandarin

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was released last month and featured the debut of many new Marvel stars. There were also some returning characters like Wong (Benedict Wong) and Abomination (Tim Roth), but the biggest surprise return was Ben Kingsley reprising his role as Trevor Slattery AKA the fake Mandarin from Iron Man 3, which delighted fans. Many folks were unhappy with Kingsley’s portrayal of the Mandarin in the third Iron Man movie, but Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings had the perfect fix. Tony Leung now plays the real Mandarin and is keeping Trevor as a prisoner/jester as punishment for the “unflattering portrait” of him. Recently, Shang-Chi writer Dave Callahamspoke with Yahoo! Entertainment! about “fixing” Iron Man 3‘s mistakes. 

“I don’t remember most of how any of this originated,” Callaham explained. “I will say I feel pretty confident saying we knew pretty early on that we’d like to make that attempt to get Trevor into the movie. I remember that being a pretty early idea because we love the character but also because when we looked at what we knew we had to accomplish in terms of a character that in some way reflects the Mandarin.” He added, “So the only connective tissue we really had available to use was Trevor because Tony Stark is dead and there haven’t been a lot of other references to the Ten Rings. So it made sense narratively.”

“I wouldn’t say we always knew from day one that the whole purpose of him was to ‘right a wrong.’ I think that came as we explored the idea, and after Destin had his somewhat famous call with Sir Ben and we knew we could actually get him. But we always hoped for it certainly,” Callaham continued. 

Previously, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige explained their original reasoning behind the Mandarin and Slattery plot twist.

“We’ve been talking about that when we do bring this character to the screen, [we] only wanted to do it when we felt we could do it supreme justice and really showcase the complexity of this character, which frankly we couldn’t do in an Iron Man movie because an Iron Man movie is about Iron Man; an Iron Man movie is about Tony Stark,” Feige shared. “So [Iron Man 3 director] Shane Black, in his film and his script that he co-wrote, came up with this fun twist that we love to this day, and it turned out to be Trevor Slattery. Just because that version wasn’t real didn’t mean there’s not a leader of the Ten Rings organization, and that is who we meet for the first time in Shang-Chi.”

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is now playing in theaters.