Said by someone who has Chris Evan's buttcheeks as his avatar. Your opinion is definitely very relevant to a heterosexual man like myself.
When Shane Black said he wasn't using the Mandarin in IM3 due to the stereotyping issue,
Shane Black?... Ah! You mean the guy who openly defended Mel Gibson's xenophobic remarks by saying, "Oh, well, we all get drunk and say stupid things."? You mean the guy who never even read an Iron Man comic? You mean the guy who doesn't even know in which year Iron Man first appeared? Sure, that talantless ha--great guy is an authority here.
Wait, you're telling me that the real comic book fans didn't like it when some hack filmmaker decided to ruin the canon due to his inability to respect comics, because he views them as a dumb books with pictures and bubbles? Huh...
People pointed out that the problematical aspects of the character could be eliminated.
Such as? Tell me about those "problematic aspects". I don't see how making an authentic Mandarin would be any more "problematic" than having Michael Pena, dressed as a lowlife rapper, talk with a cringeworthy chicano accent in that godawful Ant-Man movie. On the contrary, The Mandarin in the comics is often glorified as a man of high values and principles, who's very refined and intelligent.
Which I don't in any way as an ethnically negative aspect of any sort. But you know when you can consider a character to be radicalized? When you make him a comedic relief just because of his ethnicity - like in case with Ant-Man (hate that godawful movie).
But when Black did alter the Mandarin to dump his objectionable traits,
Altered? Shane Black didn't do jack thing about it. If you refer to Mandarin being portrayed as a dull terrorist from Middle-East, that wasn't his idea. It was already planed since the first movie, where the gang of extremists referred to themselves as "Ten Rings". Second of all, I don't see how making an Asian guy a dull Middle-Eastern cliche is any better. On the contrary, Mandarin in the comics is an apolitical figure. As Tony Stark himself have described him in Tales of Suspense #55, Mandarin is an almighty force of aggression that follows no political objectives. His only goal is to take world under his rule and destroy any sign of governmental control. Making him a political enemy of America destroys the progressiveness that the original conception of the character had.
a vocal contingent of fans were furious.
Well, because Iron Man 3 was a badly made, poorly written, horribly inauthentic to its top-notch source material piece of garbage.
A lot of them would definitely have preferred the yellow-skinned, robe-wearing old man with rings on his taloned hands to (Asian) Trevor Slattery fronting for a fire-breathing (Caucasian) supervillain. Because authenticity, of course.
I just love how these MCU fans always tend to make unsubtle insinuations in which they accuse orthodox comic book community in racism. Yeah, sure, I'm a racist. Since it was me who stood up for Mel Gibson when he said all those nice things about black and Jewish people.
But, even if you want to think that we all are members of the KKK, there is still a bit of a problem with your "comment". We can clearly see that your arrogance kind of overrides your knowledge of the subject matter.
1. Mandarin have never been portrayed with Yellow Skin in any incarnation. That's actually one of the most progressive things about the character; he was the first Asian villain that was drawn with an appropriate skin color.
(1973)
2. Hanfus (traditional Chinese clothes) are part of the Chinese folklore known as Wuxia and Chinese culture as a whole. It was very often in pre-modern China for a highborn man to wear a flamboyant outfits to illustrate his nobility. However, Mandarin wears them as a reminder of his legacy that the communists tried to take from him when he was still young and naive.
3. Mandarin isn't old. His age in comics has always varied between late 30s and early 40s.
4. Some Chinese men still to this day grow long fingernails. In Chinese culture, if you have long and clean fingernails, it shows that you are above middle-class, since you don't do proletarian work. It's why in Matt Fraction's comic book run Mandarin still has them and he looks after them.
But yeah, I hope you won't report me because I factually proved you to be wrong. Mandarin rules. Always will.
