>It's a good film, objectively - I enjoyed it but didn't like
>it. It's a tad long and definitely not the Mandarin I was
>looking forward too. I REALLY don't get where they're going
>w/this. Using the Mandarin would have been a good segue into
>guardians of the galaxy & Thanos.
>
>If they're going to keep the films 'grounded' which was the
>reason for neutering Mandarin (0stensibly) why involve
>Thanos/GG at all?

... had more to do with the racial aspect than the "magic." Obviously Extremis takes enough suspension of disbelief that we could've bought magic rings.

I heard Black talk about how he felt Mandarin's "foreignness" could make for a great message on the nature of America's trust in themselves and their xenophobia. With a puppet Mandarin, we get some nice commentary on how we as a country exploit our fear of outsiders when in fact many of the real threats to our way of life come from within. Which I thought read nicely in the story.

I'm just not sure any sort of remotely PC moviegoer would have been straight with a Mandarin from the Orient rocking a Fu Manchu and sporting mystical powers. Once they made him Middle Eastern-seeming, perhaps they could have still gone forward with the rings...

... I just liked how it became a message on fear-mongering. Considering we'll have plenty of outside threats with Avengers 2 and presumably Thor 2, it was nice to have some homegrown terrorism and a reminder that American egocentricity breeds villainy perhaps even more than some vague notion of "kill the capitalist infidels."