‘Iron Man 4’ Cast Rumors Mandarin Actor Ben Kingsley Featured In Marvel One Shot 'All Hail The King;' Will He Appear As The Real Mandarin?

Will 'Iron Man 4' get a boost from the 'real' Mandarin? The Loki fans will have to wait a while longer. Marvel's One-Shot feature in "Thor: The Dark World" DVD is not about him.

The observation that the Marvel One-shots are not related to the DVD that carries it is still holds. 'All Hail The King' is not Thor-related. It stars Ben Kingsley and the character is still Trevor Slattery. Or is it?

"All Hail The King" is written and directed by Drew Pearce and features Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery already in Seagate Prison. From Entertainment Weekly, Pearce narrates:

"Imagine a real terrorist organization whose beliefs were long held and religious for thousands of years, and imagine a drunk, British actor coming along and essentially telling the world that he's the face of your organization. I think they would be right to be quite angry."

"When we find Trevor at the beginning of this short, other than Tony, he's the only one out of Iron Man 3 to get what he wanted. And even though he was arrested and beat up and had guns pointed at him, now he's the celebrity that he always wanted to be and he loves it. He absolutely loves it. He is living a somewhat curtailed version of the celebrity life, but he's also leading arguably a better life than he did when he was living with, like, four other actors at the age of 52 in some bedsit in the south of London. That's the other fun thing about the starting point is that when we meet Trevor in the short, Trevor won. The Mandarin didn't, but Trevor in his own way was victorious."

Reading between the lines on Pearce's statement, Trevor Slattery finds out that he was tricked into playing a role (Mandarin) that may actually exist. Thus, there is a possibility for a real Mandarin to emerge in the Marvel Universe..Is this a foundation for "Iron Man 4?"

"Oh, it couldn't possibly. [Laughs.] I think short movies in general, whether they're Marvel ones or not, you kind of want them to feel like they're opening you up to a bigger world. Yeah, I definitely think there are - the non-spoiler way for me to say it - by the end of the short, there are definitely a lot of exciting other places that are brought up in it that could then go in the Marvel universe. You know, whether that's an Iron Man movie or another one going into Phase Two or Three."

Is this a foreshadowing tactic, misdirection, or apology? Pearce has already given the latter. In a What Culture interview he gave after the controversy erupted:

"I honestly don't sympathize with the fans [in that respect], and I'm sorry [our version of The Mandarin] didn't work for a really tiny, but vocal, minority of them. But there isn't a version of The Mandarin, for me, that would've worked in the Iron Man franchise."

Nothing is ever final for the inventive minds of comics and film, especially when they are combined. Nothing is final yet, until we hear everything that Trevor Slattery wants to tell us.