Many of these are long-time fans of the Iron Man comic mythos, who felt robbed by the switcheroo writer/director Shane Black pulled with Iron Man’s arch-nemesis, The Mandarin.
The director additionally spoke about the Iron Man series diverging from the comics, for instance in the case of Iron Man 2 with the villain Whiplash.
In the past, Black referred to The Mandarin as a “racist stereotype of a Fu Manchu villain just waving his fist.”
Black went on to say that the inspiration for their version of The Mandarin came from the Marvel Comics concept of A.I.M. and created a “straw man terrorist” in order to create fear within the world of Iron Man 3.