Iron Man 3 bad guy sans gatts (courtesy soylentrefuge.com)

Have a look at the movie poster for the new Iron Man 3 snarkathon. Notice the lack of gatts in the hands of The Mandarin (Ben Kinglsey reprising his role as Ghandi, more or less). Make the jump for the same poster distributed in Russia. Guns ‘O Plenty (James Bond’s old secretary). Something to do with the fact that Disney owns Marvel Studios? [h/t soylentrefuge.blogspot.com]

Iron Man 3 baddie violating basic gun safety rules (courtesy soylentrefuge.blogspot.com)

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28 COMMENTS

  2. Ain’t nothin’ but a thang. I don’t think this is going to change what’s in the movie any more than it will convince mobsters and gangbangers that real “bad asses” don’t use guns. If they really feel that they can get more people to see the movie if they take a gun out of a poster, then so be it. Heck, if that’s the case, it’s their obligation to remove the gun. It’s just too bad they lacked the foresight to shoot the picture without a gun in the first place.

    • A nerd? Wow, your icon and user name didn’t give it away at all.

      So what happens when the Green Lantern Corps gets a Yellow Fever epidemic?

    • Yeah, but The Mandarin is supposed to be half-Chinese and they get Kingsley who is half-Indian. Hollywood seriously couldn’t have some old half-Chinese guy to play as the Mandarin?

      • Weelll…

        The very word Mandarin is from the Hindi menteri, a counselor or minister. Most Mandarin dialects are spoken in the north and southwest of present day China.

        The Mandarins were the officials under the distributed government of old China, and were drawn from the local populations. The Mandarin flavour of Chinese formed of necessity, as the local languages from widely disparate regions were often mutually incomprehensible. Mandarin was therefor the “lingua Franca” by which the government communicated within its own ranks, the speech of officials.

        Now a southwestern Chinese from an Himalayan region will look like the people of his area, who don’t really look all that much like the Han people who we yanks envision when we think “Chinese.”

        Further, as Mandarins were typically locals working for the empire, the ones from near India looked like the Indians thereabouts – even like Ben Kingsley. Genetics have no respect for artificial borders.

        China is big, and even its pre-expansion borders encompass an area so vast as to contain a very diverse population representing a great many ethnicities in their historic locations.

        Indians themselves run quite a gamut as well; Asians as a whole have a huge variety of colours and forms.

        Yes, I’m a geek.

  4. It’s been a while since I read Iron Man comics, but didn’t the Mandarin use some kind of mystical rings or something? I never remember him being the bandolier type anyway.
    EDIT: Hal’s got it covered. I thought I remembered that right!

  5. Ben, I think Gandhi would disapprove of such untruth on several levels.

    “Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”

    ~Mohandas Gandhi (An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Penguin Books, 2010, page 446)

  7. The differences between the posters is stark. The poster for the U.S. suggests a character who is deep in thought, never implying that the thoughts may include violence or mayhem. The image utilized for the Russian market however, while seemingly thoughtful as well, emphasizes via display of weaponry that violence is a part of the character’s tool chest. Disney demonstrates what their salesmen will say is marketing genius, and in today’s atmosphere that may be the case, however they also demonstrate Hypocrisy with a capital H…………

  8. Changes in advertising is pretty standard based upon region and country. When I was in Kuwait this past winter the Victoria Secret there cropped the pictures to just the face of the models yet here in the States you get a fully body picture in the store window. I don’t see this as being malicious or nefarious in anyway but rather standard practice in any international advertising campaign.

  9. Followed the link and found this comment: “Just who doesn’t
    want to see a villain with a bunch of weapons? Not the audience.
    The only people who might be offended are the Pols in the midst
    of their 2nd Amendment violations. If evil masterminds don’t
    have full-auto rifles and semiautomatic pistols, you certainly don’t
    need any, do you? And those ammo belts, just hand those over
    to DHS like a good slave, okay?”

    Personally, I think it’s simply marketing, and not quite so nefarious.
    As Hal stated, the mandarin isn’t a gun guy. More people
    (i.e. nerds) in the US are going to know the Mandarin this; whereas
    the Russians won’t. So throw in a few guns to make it look like your
    typical action flick.

  10. I kind of like it without the guns… gives it “I’m such a bad guy I don’t need guns” vibe

  12. Two things:

    1. It looks like the guns were added for the foreign poster rather than removed from the US poster. The pic without the guns just looks better and is more in line with The Mandarin as a character.

    2. Fin Fang Foom!?!?

  13. It could be argued… that the image of a villain surrounded by guns furthers the idea that guns are evil. That would make the Russian poster MORE incendiary to gun rights activists than the American version.

    OR…

    It’s just a movie poster. Relax dude. 🙂

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