What's Up with Iron Man II? Just Ask Jon Favreau
By Emily Christianson, Hollywood.com Staff
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Monday, September 29, 2008
HW: You don't have The Mandarin in Iron Man, but you referenced him and so it's like you can get that fantastical stuff in there with that character if you wanted it, right?
JF: It is. The Mandarin is such a tricky character for us because everywhere you turn it's a minefield. So we get into the mystical Asian dark arts and inter-dimensional travel and all the rings that do the different things and psychic abilities and stuff and it's like, 'That could be cool. Maybe it's cool. Maybe if we make it really authentic.' Then you see the trailer for The Mummy movie and it's like they've got The Manderin and Fing Fang Foom in there. And they shot in China and it's like as authentic as you're ever going to get. It's like, 'Ooh, I don't know if that fits our film.' It was great for The Mummy though. So where do you go with it?
HW: You’ve hinted at using The Mandarin in the third film.
JF: Yeah, The Mandarin is still the guy. He's the main guy, but we always remind ourselves that nobody like The Emperor compared to Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies. He's got the same lightening bolts, but when The Emperor was this figure that you just saw obliquely it was like, 'Shit, Darth Vader is bowing to someone? That guy must be really cool.' But then as he talked more it was like, 'Alright, enough.' In The Clone Wars II he was like a sidekick. So it's really all how you treat the person and that's what informs what it's going to be. So The Mandarin, to have that kind of weight to him is really a matter of using all the narrative tricks to do it, but a dude running and jumping around in robes shooting these beams and rays that have powers that really, if you take them literally, would throw off the balance of the whole universe. So how do you do that and keep the whole thing together, but yet fulfill the expectations from the book? We do have him and I think it's something where I feel a little bit goes a long way.