Mandarin To Be The Villain In Iron Man 3? By Joey Ernand on November 22, 2009 We don't even have a trailer for "Iron Man 2," yet there's already gossip for part 3. Faran Tahir, who played the leader of the Ten Rings terrorist organization that held Tony Stark hostage in "Iron Man," has hinted that his character will become the Mandarin in the third chapter. Here's what he said to Moviefone: "At some point, they want to introduce Mandarin into the storyline and my character, like Mandarin, was the leader of the Ten Rings. We're leaving it open because, partly, it makes good business sense for us to leave a little bit of uncertainty for people to speculate on." "He [Favreau] has known for a long time where he wants to take it and I don't want to speak for him, but my feeling is that the second movie didn't want to just follow a singular storyline. They wanted to expand the characters to show that it's not a linear saga like Lord of the Rings. There's a linkage somewhere in there, but the big idea is to do at least one more Iron Man movie and then go into The Avengers." I will leave it up to you guys to decide whether or not Mandarin is a good move, seeing as I have no knowledge of Iron Man's drawn adventures. I will say that I like continuity and connections in film series, so if done right this could work very well. I'm still nervous about an Avengers movie though. There are so many ways they can eff that up, it's not even funny. What do you do with such a big property? Keep it grounded for its first story? Or go all out and have them fight an alien invasion force? And how do you balance all these larger than life characters? And how big will the budget be? And if Marvel ever gets the film rights back for Spidey and X-Men, do you bring them into the fold at some point? Can you imagine a scene where Tobey Maguire, Hugh Jackman, Robert Downey Jr., and Ed Norton are all hanging out in a space ship, with their clunky space helmets on, spewing one liners and mocking each other on their way to fight space pirates or something?? That would be insane. Source: Moviefone Tags: Iron Man 2, News