BoxOffice® Pro - May 2013

ig picture > iron man 3
69-year-old Oscar winner Ben Kingsley. In the
comics, The Mandarin has near-superpowers,
thanks to two fistfuls of rings that each has its
own special power. Not so in Iron Man 3—
now, Kingsley’s charged with being a formidable
nemesis for the man made of metal even
without an evil boost from space magic.
“I hate to break it to you, but he’s not
from space in this,” admits Black. “The rings
are rings. They’re showmanship. They’re accoutrements.
They’re paraphernalia of warfare
that he sort of drapes himself with.”
To The Mandarin, image is everything.
Like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, he’s a
shrewd, media-aware terrorist bent on destroying
hope and heroism.
“We used as the example Colonel Kurtz
from Apocalypse Now,” says Black. “Someone
who is out there doing fieldwork, supervising
atrocities for the intelligence community, who
went nuts in the field and became this sort of
devotee of war tactics, and now has surrounded
himself with a group of people over which
he presides—and the only thing that unifies
them is this hatred of America. So he’s the ultimate
terrorist, but he’s also savvy. He’s been
in the intelligence world. He knows how to
use the media. And taking it to a real-world
level like that was a lot fun for us.”
Christopher Nolan seems to have been a
major influence in this pared-down, darker
threequel, both in forcing the lead hero to
shane black and robert
downey jr. on the set of
black’s kiss kiss bang bang
rebuild himself from scratch and in pitting him
against a showman who exposes his weaknesses.
Elaborates Black, “One of the joys for me has
always been seeing how you take a villain from
the comic book and realize him in a slightly
more realistic way for the movie that’s recognizable,
but different. Like the Joker in The Dark
Knight is not the Joker from the comic book,
but there’s just enough of him that you recognize
him and go, ‘Wow, what a creative way of
interpreting the Joker for motion pictures.’ So
that was our task here too. The fans love this
character of The Mandarin, and we just said,
‘Well, what we don’t want is this potentially
racist stereotype of a Fu Manchu villain just
waving his fist.’”
“Grounding it in reality is most important,”
says Feige. “Even in the comics, that’s
the difference between caring about a comic
book character and not: if their emotional
response is believable and is appropriate.”
Believable and appropriate? That, Feige
and Black can do. Now all Iron Man 3 has to
do is keep pace with its predecessors, both of
which made more than $500 million worldwide.
And, of course, wait for its biggest
franchise test: now that fans have been spoiled
by The Avengers, will they want to see Tony
Stark without his homeboys? Feige is feeling
confident.
“If you’re reading a standalone Iron Man
comic, they don’t spend every page explaining
where every other Marvel hero is. The audience
kind of accepts that there are times when
they’re on their own and there are times when
they are together,” insists Feige. “I’m betting
that movie audiences will feel the same way.”
98 Boxoffice pro may 2013