Iron Man 3: Revealing the Mandarin : By Marc Strom Ben Kingsley stars as the Mandarin in "Iron Man 3" For decades, the Mandarin has plagued Tony Stark in the pages of the Iron Man comics. Now, with Marvel’s “Iron Man 3,” he comes to cinematic life to challenge the Armored Avenger in a whole new way. Played by Ben Kingsley in the film, the Mandarin has received a 21 st -century update for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the filmmakers have long teased the villain, even since the early days of the firs Iron Man movie. “For those of you following along I think it was Comic-Con 2007 when [‘Iron Man’ director] Jon Favreau said, ‘I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you the Mandarin is the bad guy,’” recalls “Iron Man 3” producer Kevin Feige. “We thought, ‘what can we tell them? That’s probably pretty safe.’ And then we changed it about 12 weeks before we started filming. We said, ‘there’s too much stuff going on here, we want to focus on Tony more,’ so we took [M