Hey, I’m not a big comic fan, so when I saw news from Angry Asian Man that Iron Man 2 may have Mandarin, I was puzzled. They’ll speak Mandarin? Is this newsworthy? Come to find out it’s the Mandarin, an evil villain in the old Iron Man comics. He’s also a racist caricature with a Fu Manchu, stereotyped as having great talent in science and is a horrible driver of his teleportation device. Thankfully, things have improved and director Jon Favreau wishes for the Mandarin to be less racist-y:

“There is a lot that is very relevant about that character, in the pool of the landscape that we find ourselves in, but there is something off-putting and distasteful about the way that the Mandarin had been presented back in the ’60s. I don’t think that is relevant anymore. How do you maintain the core spirit of what makes that villain so formidable without having something that either seemed out of  our reality, as far as what his abilities are, or the way he is depicted?”

Yes, how does one “maintain the core spirit” of a villain AND make it relevant. Read between the lines. Don’t be surprised if Iron Man fights a new villain called the Arabic.

Iron Man’s Repulsors Might Set on The Mandarin for Sequel [Wired]