IRON MAN 3 was a great superhero film and arguably the best in the Marvel franchise (second only to THE AVENGERS). It did however cause quite a stir with the controversial twist revealed towards the climax of the film. This twist was of course that Ben Kingsley’s ‘Mandarin’ was in fact just a drunken British actor named Trevor Slattery, who was posing in the place of the films true villain Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce). This unexpected development was met with mixed response from Marvel fan-boys however many people (myself included) also found it brilliantly refreshing and pretty hilarious too.
Ben Kingsley’s side-splitting portrayal of the drunken Brit with a ‘little problem with substances’ was a joy to watch on screen and as a result the character will return for a short ‘One-Shot’ film attached to the Blu-ray of THOR: THE DARK WORLD. Previously Marvel Studios have attached One-Shot films to their Blu-ray releases in order to showcase popular characters such as Agent Coulson and Peggy Carter. ‘Agent Carter’ was the most recent One-Shot that was included on the IRON MAN 3 Blu-ray. The film featured Hayley Atwell reprising her role from CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER in a beautifully crafted mini story that also had a surprise cameo from Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark.
ALL HAIL THE KING will see Kingsley return for a 14 minute expansion of his story following his arrest in the final moments of IRON MAN 3. The One-Shot was written and directed by IRON MAN 3 screenwriter Drew Pearce, you can see four photos from the short below:
Below you can also see what Pearce had to say about the upcoming Trevor Slattery- centered short film in a lengthy brand new interview.
Pearce explained that the fans are not the only ones angry with the reveal of Trevor Slattery’s false identity.
‘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’.
‘I had spoken to Sir Ben a lot on set because Trevor was a tricky character that everyone was involved with right from the beginning. And it was always a huge risk. I was so grateful to him when he pulled it off after a year of truly worrying about whether we could land that turn. So, “The Further Adventures of Trevor” was something we had talked about on set all the time, and when we sat down to talk about what the short would be, it was Stephen [Broussard, executive producer of Iron Man 3] and Kevin [Feige, Marvel Studios president] and myself and Joss Whedon and Jeremy Latcham [executive producer of The Avengers.] So we kicked around a bunch of ideas and there were loads of them that we liked, and it was actually Joss who at a certain point went like, ‘Or you could do the one that has Sir Ben Kingsley in it because you have access to Sir Ben Kingsley”.
When asked if it was always the plan to make a One-Shot featuring Trevor, Pearce replied.
‘No, no, no, no. There were lots of possibilities from the Iron Man 3 world. Joss that said, “You got Sir Ben” at which point we all went, “Hopefully we get Sir Ben” and then I had to go write a script that would mean Sir Ben would commit. We stayed in touch and I sent it to him. I don’t know if he’s ever, and it’s nothing to do with me, but I don’t know if he’s ever been funnier than he is as Trevor. Like, obviously he’s not as funny as Trevor when he’sGandhi or in Schindler’s List, but what he does with Trevor is incredible’.
It seems the short film could also link to the first IRON MAN film and the overall mythology of the franchise according to Pearce.
‘What it’s doing on that level is, it reiterates a bunch of stuff that actually Shane [Black, director and co-writer of Iron Man 3] and I said in our interviews around the movie. There’s lots of exposition in lots of different cuts of Iron Man 3 that, in the end, kind of got snubbed out. It’s kind of said in Iron Man 3 but very briefly, Aldrich essentially took a thing that was real, historically real and culturally real, and co-opted it for his own means — essentially co-opting an ancient terrorist concept. What [All Hail the King] does is show that everything in Iron Man 1 [involving the terrorist group] was canon all along any way. We kind of knew The Ten Rings were a real terrorist cell’.
Pearce also responded to the claim that Trevor’s actions had a larger effect on the world.
‘Absolutely! One of the interesting things about Trevor is, and this is something that we can talk about up front and what was important for the short is, Trevor is funny when everything else around him is serious. Trevor is a broad character, but his largest than life nature is absolutely a reality for a bunch of actors I know. The idea of Trevor feeling like he’s genuinely getting punished is kind of a thing that felt like a good starting point. Marvel movies often do this, when they play with both the bright colors of comic books and the reality of it’.
Could ALL HAIL THE KING possibly lead in to an 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’.
On whether or not Kingsley improvised any of his lines in the same way that Robert Downey Jr. often does.
Trevor is accused of becoming an actor stuck in the same role forever and acquiring fame as a result.
‘That’s absolutely a part of it. 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’.
The rest of Entertainment Weekly‘s interview with Pearce consists of questions specifically relating to the short after already viewing it, so head over to them for the full transcript by clicking here!
