Yellowface strikes again. Ben Kingsley plays the Mandarin in the next Iron Man movie [View all]
Check out the weak ass excuse they gave:
http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=35567
Iron Man 3 Day continues apace with EW unveiling the first look at Sir Ben Kingsley's Mandarin, the bad guy set to put Tony Stark through his paces over the course of the highly-anticipated threequel.
The character of The Mandarin was considered by many (including writer/director Shane Black) as too racially insensitive to be portrayed on screen, but Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige has explained how Sir Ben is going to play the originally Oriental baddie: by not actually being Chinese.
Its less about his specific ethnicity than the symbolism of various cultures and iconography that he perverts for his own end, Feige told EW.
Bullshit. I would have believed them if they said they were afraid of offending China (see: the way they changed Red Dawn's antagonists from China to North Korea
)...
actually, no I wouldn't have.