If anyone is really paying attention, and many are, what’s been happening with Iron Man for a long time appears to be one giant shell game in which fans believe they’re being told the truth about the Avenger, while at the same time they’re being lied to, and have been for many years now. From the idea that Tony was trying to recruit Bruce Banner during the post-credit scene of The Incredible Hulk to several comic book stories, some of which were dumped rather quickly, Iron Man has been one giant lie by Marvel apparently since a lot of the things that people should have likely figured out for themselves are being called falsehoods. One of the most entertaining is that the Mandarin was thought to be the villain of Iron Man 3. This is where the gullibility of the fans comes into play since if anyone has ever read the comics, the Mandarin is a very serious opponent, not a British man in a topknot with what look like dimestore plastic rings on his fingers. Granted, not everyone has read the comics, but a quick Google search under Iron Man would have revealed the true nature of the Mandarin and their history.
It could be that the MCU had to double back and make sure that the Mandarin could in fact exist in the MCU in a real way and that the false character in Iron Man 3 would be killed for the temerity of standing in as a character he didn’t understand. That’s kind of dark, but it fits the character, to be honest. Now, with the Shang Chi movie coming out soon, the Mandarin can be given the kind of respect he deserves as a villain, though it’s regrettable that he won’t get to fight against Iron Man. At least he’ll be a part of the MCU though, which is a better option than saying ‘oops’ and letting the name slide into obscurity as a few others have done.
The numerous things that Marvel has ‘lied’ about concerning Iron Man are kind of amusing really since if this is the route that people want to go then it’s likely that we could do this for many characters throughout the Marvel universe and the MCU since there aren’t a lot of them that don’t have skeletons of some type in their past. Trying to call out one hero, in particular, that isn’t perfect by any means but is also an easy target since he became the face of the MCU early on and remained that way until Endgame. Talking about Iron Man and his many faults is something that can be done by a lot of people that know something about the character, but looking past all that is usually the more desired path since Iron Man has committed many heroic acts that make it possible to give him a bit of a break sometimes. The character of Tony Stark was written to be a redemptive character after all, which is something that Stan Lee admitted to at point. Stark was never meant to be perfect, he was meant to be an individual that was bound and determined to become better after a life-changing event that left him no choice but to survive, and to find a way to remedy the sins of his past.
It’s true that Marvel has goofed a few times when telling Iron Man’s story, and has come up with a few different ideas that were anything but great. But outright lying to people is taking it a bit far since we’re talking about a fictional character and one that wasn’t bound to be a paragon of virtue to start with. The idea that Marvel has mucked around with Iron Man’s story is obvious, but the idea that he’s the only one that’s received this treatment in the Marvel universe, well, it might be time to grow up just a little bit when it comes to the fans and those that pore through every issue and detail about the movies. It’s not a call to stop noticing things, far from it. But it’s a call to stop being this naive to make the claim that Marvel has been lying out of some need to deceive the people into thinking that Iron Man is a bigger jerk than he was already labeled as.
Bringing up the past and problems of other characters for comparison isn’t really needed since if one can really bring themselves to think about it, there are a lot of other characters in the Marvel universe that have been ‘lied about’ by Marvel throughout the years. Of course, when saying ‘lied about’ it usually means that Marvel has tried one or more storylines out for each character, and some of them just didn’t work.
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