Hook winked and Bamboozled by IRON MAN 3

WARNING: This blog entry contains nothing but spoilers regarding IRON MAN 3. If you have not seen the movie yet, I advice you to not read this. You will be spoiled. Don't say that I didn't warn you.

 SPOILER WARNINGS out of the way, I can discuss what has Fan boys across the world with their panties in a bunch over IRON MAN 3.
   Now that we have the

   The Mandarin, Iron Man's arch enemy in the comic book is not in this movie. Oh sure, he is talked about and we even believe for over half the movie that Sir Ben Kingsley is the Mandarin. But he isn't. It turns out that he is a British stage actor hired by Aldrich Killian, the real villain, to portray a terrorist issuing threats against the President and America.

   Ben Kingsley's performance is brilliant and deserves an Oscar nomination. He fools you into believing he is this extreme threat to Tony Stark and America. Then, we the audience get pants half way through the movie.

    It's a bold and risky move by Shane Black and Drew Pearce, the screenwriters, to hook wink and bamboozle the audience. That's ghetto slang meaning we just got fooled.

    I have to admit that when I figured I had been had, I was angry for the rest of the second act and then got over it when the high octane action of the third act kicked in. 

  Bottom line, we the audience, or those like me who bought into the lie that The Mandarin would take part in the movie were fooled. But I am grateful for being fooled because I like being surprised better, that is if you can actually surprise me. That's exactly what Shane Black and company did. Did it work? Depends on your overall thoughts of the movie and if you can get over being fooled. 

   In this Internet age that we live in, it's almost impossible to be surprised at anything. Today's movies are almost always ruined for us before we get into the theater. Sometimes, like IRON MAN 3 for example, we can be still be surprised. That's a rarity.