Wonder Man Proves Iron Man 3 Deserves More Love

This post contains spoilers for Wonder Man.

Like President Ellis of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, fans have refused to learn the Mandarin’s lesson. In 2013’s Iron Man 3, the Mandarin tried to “educate” the president through acts of terrorism, teaching the country something about its history or foriegn affairs or… Well, listen, it isn’t clear what exactly the Mandarin was trying to say because, of course, he was just a front, a goofball actor called Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) hired by weapon manufacturer Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) to create a false threat and drum up support for arms purchases.

Brilliant as that reveal was, some fans hated it and rank Iron Man 3 at the bottom of their lists. Despite being helmed by ’80s action veteran Shane Black, who co-wrote the script with Drew Pearce, viewers hated the movie’s mix of War on Terror deconstruction, precocious kid story, and jokey take on established characters, especially making Iron Man’s usual arch-enemy into a gag.

And yet, those of us who love Iron Man 3 continue to try to educate the naysayers. And with Slattery’s return and redemption in Wonder Man, we may have received our best lesson yet.

The Trouble With the Mandarin

Introduced by Stan Lee and Don Heck in 1964’s Tales of Suspense #50, the Mandarin has long been Iron Man’s arch enemy. The Chinese-born son of a wealthy national and an English aristocrat, the Mandarin possesses a scientific knowledge to rival Tony Stark and 10 magical rings, each granting him different powers. The Mandarin’s battles with Iron Man became classic clashes of civilizations, with the latter representing American know-how and the former standing in for Eastern traditions. To underscore the point, Lee and Heck based the Mandarin directly on Fu Manchu, a long-running racist caricature and exemplar of yellow peril tropes.

Thus, it’s easy to understand why Marvel would be reluctant to bring the Mandarin into their mainline universe. And it’s easy to understand why they would go for Black’s twist in Iron Man 3, revealing that the guy who seemed like a Southern-fried Osama bin Laden was in fact a doofus English actor and prolific drug user, who posed no threat to anyone but himself.

But it’s also easy to understand the sense of betrayal fans felt. After all, the MCU built itself on faithfully adapting the comics. Where superhero movies of years past seemed almost embarrassed by the source material, turning Batman into an ’80s action hero who killed his enemies and dressing the X-Men in black leather, the MCU gave us a Thor who spoke like a Shakespearean extra, an earnest Captain America in star-spangled duds, and a proper crossover Avengers movie. How dare they back down now?

Even after giving us a more traditional Mandarin in the form of Xu Wenwu in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, played by the incredible Tony Leung, fans remained unhappy, dismissing Iron Man 3 as an embarrassment. But now, Wonder Man has come along to show them how wrong they are.

A Wonderful Return

In what must be a nod to the MCU’s founding father Robert Downey Jr., the Trevor Slattery of Wonder Man has done a 180 from where we first met him in Iron Man 3. Not only is he clean and sober, so far along his recovery process that he can watch Simon (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) enjoy a drink and not even feel the sting of temptation, but he’s also a great actor. Trevor’s getting gigs, but he’s not free of the past. More frustrating than the many questions he must answer about his time as the Mandarin, Trevor’s being blackmailed by the Department of Damage Control, forced to help them reveal Simon’s ionic powers.

Across Wonder Man‘s eight episodes, Kingsley plays Trevor as a three-dimensional person. He still has some of the pretentiousness and air-headedness that made him so much fun in Iron Man 3 and Shang-Chi. But it’s grounded with real weight, as Trevor deals with the consequences of his actions, his respect for Simon, and, finally, finds a way to take hold of his legacy as the Mandarin.

The end of Trevor’s arc makes the audacity of Iron Man 3 all the more satisfying. Iron Man 3 was the perfect culmination of Tony Stark’s arc, which began in the first movie with him as a reckless playboy who lives lavishly off the money his weapons provides for him and continues as he becomes a selfish hero. Tony seemed to reach the end of that arc at the climax of The Avengers, when he flew through a wormhole to detonate a nuclear bomb in the emptiness of space instead of in New York, but Iron Man 3 showed there was still one step left. The overwhelming fear he felt after the trauma of The Avengers drove Tony toward relapse, once again turning to weapons manufacturing to feel safe, even if it endangers people worse.

The Mandarin mirrors Tony’s desire for safety through weapons. Killian created the Mandarin to scare Americans so much that the U.S. government has to approve his Extremis project. And it worked, because the Mandarin a collection of scary signifiers, despite his references to very real sins of America’s past and present. Killian is betting that Americans won’t face those sins and will instead choose to attack the Mandarin with Extremis, even if they blow themselves up in the process.

In other words, the central conflict represented by the Mandarin is the same internal conflict within Tony. What happens when something is too scary? What happens when you’d rather blame a bad guy than deal with your own problems? Tony Stark is a hero because he acknowledges his role in create weapons and creating Killian, because he learns to accept that he and his loved ones can never be safe, and even gives up being Iron Man (at least until Avengers: Age of Ultron two years later).

Through the misdirect of the Mandarin, Iron Man 3 gives thematic weight to the good guy/bad guy battle, resulting in a movie both rich and theme and character. Sure, we lose some comics accuracy in the process, but it’s a pretty good trade-off.

The Teacher Has Been Taught

Nothing in Wonder Man gets as heady as Iron Man 3. The series works as a quiet character comedy set in the world of Marvel heroes, with relatively low stakes, despite Simon’s powers and the presence of Damage Control.

However, when put in context of Iron Man 3, Trevor’s actions in Wonder Man mirror the heroics of even Tony Stark. When Trevor puts on the Mandarin costume in episode eight and once again appears on screen, declaring “I did that” to draw attention away from Simon’s potentially career-ending use of powers, he’s doing something that it took three full movies for Tony Stark to figure out. He’s taking responsibility for hurting people with his abilities (acting instead of weapons manufacturing) and he’s making it right by helping someone else.

Finally, the Mandarin learned his own lesson.

Wonder Man is now streaming on Disney+.