Ben Kingley's Marvel One-Shot

You know, you have to love marketing noise.  ALSO, if you haven't seen Iron Man 3 yet, there are some minor spoilers below.

Images have been released from EW for the Marvel One-Shot with Ben Kingsley reprising his role Trevor from Iron Man 3.  It will be included on the Thor: The Dark World DVD/BD that comes out on February 25th.

The One-Shot is a 14-minute bit where Trevor is being interviewed.  One of the questions that comes up in the interview is if the Ten Rings might be ticked off at him for mocking their organization.

Here's the low down from IM3 screenwriter Drew Pearce:

{"Imagine a real terrorist organization whose beliefs were long held and religious for thousands of years, and imagine a drunk, British actor coming along and essentially telling the world that he's the face of your organization. I think they would be right to be quite angry."}

Pearce is quoted to how they came about the idea of using Kingsley in the One-Shot, saying,

{So we kicked around a bunch of ideas and there were loads of them that we liked, and it was actually Joss (Whedon) who at a certain point went like, 'Or you could do the one that has Sir Ben Kingsley in it because you have access to Sir Ben Kingsley.'}

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I'm going to call the above quote a pile of "sunshine up our butts" marketing crap.

Back in late October, it was reported that Marvel was making a one-short with Kingsley, the line being "Marvel wants to make it up to fans so in the one shot, the REAL Mandarin is furious with Aldrich Killian and Trevor Slattery for the mockery they made of the real Mandarin’s identity and legacy. The real Mandarin wants to set the record straight."

(For those non comic franchise fans, what they did to The Mandarin was akin to making Lex Luthor a drunken distraction.  They really screwed with the character, that for over 40 years, had been the arch nemesis of Tony Stark in the comic book)

Iron Man 3 did very well as a movie, but raped the expectations of comic franchise fans with this trick.

So when we heard they were making it right with long-time (life-long in some instances) fans, I thought that was a great start.  (Director Shane Black pulling out the classic rock from the 1st two movies was another agitation, but that's a minor thing.)

And now, their official stance seems to be taking a different route than what I was expecting.

Shame on you, Marvel.  I don't blame Joss Whedon for his part in this.  Once you're on the big boat with the big players, you have to play their game.

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Other Iron Man Posts

Marvel is OK with the Mandarin Twist?;
Why Did The Mandarin Upset Some Iron Man Fans?;

Entertainment Weekly; <- more pics of Kingsley

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