Kevin Feige also said that "early (and very late)drafts of Iron Man 1 featured The Mandarin as a villain." So, no, these weren't just hints or easter eggs. They were very intentional, as apparently a build-up for something that would happen later. You can always argue that this never happened they way they intended, because Jon Favreau didn't return to direct IM3, but it's more because Marvel clearly doesn't give a **** about consequences in their movies.
So all in all, they had these huge, dramatic, serious-looking trailers, brought the Mandarin, Iron Man's arch-nemesis, cast Ben ****ing Kingsley, made him the center of the marketing, like he's this huge, big treat to Tony Stark, had him say all these silly lines that don't even appear in the movie itself, just so that they can have this joke of a twist?..
Why not have the Joker in the next Batman movie played by a big actor, and then have Calendar Man pop up and say that the Joker is actually a dime-store knock-off he pulled from the loony bin, so that he can pretend to be a big treat to Batman, and have CM claim he's the real Joker in the climax. Come to think about it, that would make even more sense, because it will be a joke, hence having a Joker - but what was the purpose of having the Mandarin wasted like that?!
Were they so proud of that twist scene and the joke they pulled, to go on and create this elaborate plan into making us believe that we'll actually see the Mandarin done right on screen? The scene wasn't even funny. It was a bad joke. After that, I just couldn't care less about the rest of the movie, because it was hard to take anything even slightly seriously.
This was the biggest trolling I've seen a movie pull off... It's one thing to have another studio **** up Galactus by making him a cloud, but this is Marvel Studios making fun of their own characters. I understand the reasons they had for not having the Mandarin, and as much as I wanted to see him show up in these movies, I would've been okay if he never did. Why bring the superhero's arch-nemesis, in such a useless way (the movie could've easily, easily worked without the Mandarin), and make him a complete and utter joke?
Why the need to put such a great actor into the role of a goofball, when you had a great opportunity to re-imagine the character as a terrorist leader and ideologist who doesn't believe in heroes and indeed considers his acts a teaching in a twisted kind of way? The trailers made him look like an interesting character. All these lines he never even said in the movie itself seemed to suggest that the Mandarin is a resourceful, calculative ideologist who undermines Tony's status as a hero, in a post-Avengers world that made Iron Man an even bigger public personality. That sounded like a great premise for a promise by Marvel to put new challenges onto these characters to make them prove themselves once again.
But no, we had to have an evil scientist-competitor, who wants revenge on Tony Stark for something happened in the past (like we didn't have those two in the second movie), who has the same abilities that all his other soldiers have. They couldn't have the ten rings before because supposedly it wasn't going to fit in this universe, but after Thor and The Avengers, what was stopping them? It could've been a great conflict between science and magic, and Tony vs the Mandarin. You can have an fire-breathing demonic Killian, but you can't have a character with magical abilities?
Speaking of Killian, what was the point of having him proclaim himself as the Mandarin at the end of his fight with Iron Man? Was that supposed to be a shocking reveal? Uhm, no, we knew that already. Was this supposed to be a wink to the comic book fans? Like if they can't tell the difference between Aldrich Killian and the Mandarin, two completely different characters, so they need to force it down their throats that they're now merged into one character. It was completely pointless.
Which brings it to the next thing - seems like there's a lot of pointless stuff that Marvel Studios doesn't care to take action about and face consequences afterwards. Which would be okay if they didn't make such a big deal out of it. Why have this emotional moment with Pepper supposedly dying, even when we saw her becoming infected with Extremis a few minutes ago?
Why should I care if Tony Stark removes the arc reactor and seemingly quits being Iron Man, when no doubt he's going to return to being Iron Man once again? And why did he wait until just now to make this life-saving operation, if he clearly didn't need the arc reactor to power all his armors anymore? And why does he ever need to go inside the suit if he can control it remotely? If he can construct a few dozens of armors in a matter of months, why wouldn't he bring even more of them when the next alien invasion comes? In fact, why wouldn't he just throw them in the fight without having to even control them if Jarvis can do this for him?
Anyway, who cares? Seemingly Marvel doesn't, because they have the tendency to make these huge, dramatic moments and endings completely irrelevant, with no consequences following after. The whole ending of Iron Man 2 with Tony being rejected from the Avengers Initiative, and Thor's dramatic choice to destroy the bridge at the end of his movie, are being completely disregarded to having absolutely no importance for anything, being explained with a simple line in a dialogue that isn't even about these things. Coulson's death is also going to have the same kind of treatment in the forthcoming TV show, and I bet my ass the ending of IM3 is going to be completely ignored the next time Tony Stark shows up.
I need to wrap this up, because it's getting out of hand. I'm clearly very upset, and this has been bothering me the whole weekend, so I had to throw it out. I apologize to anyone who feels they spent too much time reading this, and I don't want to offend anyone with my opinion on this movie. I rarely go into such rants about stuff that pissed me off like that, but that was just too much.
