Photo: Entertainment Weekly
Marvel’s latest one-shot short film, “All Hail the King”, will be released with the “Thor: The Dark World” Blu-ray which is due to be released on February 25th. This latest short will give us a look at British actor, Trevor Slattery (aka “The Mandarin”), and his time in prison since the events of “Iron Man 3”.
EW has an in-depth first look at the Marvel short starring Ben Kingsley, including an interview with writer and director, Drew Pearce.
As the short begins, Slattery has agreed to do his first interview with a documentary filmmaker (Argo’s Scoot McNairy), who is chronicling the aftermath of Tony Stark’s latest saga. In the photo above, they are seen sitting in Slattery’s surprisingly expansive prison quarters, which is adorned by memorabilia from his less than stellar past. Note the King Lear poster on the back wall (three and a half stars) which, as Iron Man 3told us, was once “the toast of Croydon — wherever that is.”
McNairy’s documentary not only delves into the actor’s past (including a look back at an outrageous Miami Vice-like failed TV pilot from the ‘80s) but is trying to figure out if The Ten Rings is really out there, and possibly targeting the jailed thespian for making a mockery of their organization.
A lot of fans were pretty up in arms about the portrayal of The Mandarin in “Iron Man 3”, but I thought it was a great take and this latest Marvel One-Shot is going to expand on that in what sounds like a great way. In the first Iron Man film, there were mentions of the Ten Rings organization, so we know this is an actual terrorist group. Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) used the name of the organization and created a false face for it to achieve his own goals in “Iron Man 3”, and it sounds like this is going to come back to have unintended consequences for Slattery.
There are some spoilers in the article with regards to the plot of “All Hail the King”, but not everything is given away. Reading the article raises some exciting questions for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one that comes to mind for me is if there is a real Mandarin out there who is none-to-happy with Slattery’s portrayal and will reveal himself at some point in the future to wreak havoc in Tony Stark’s life?
Marvel has built an amazing cinematic universe for their heroes and these One-Shots do a great job giving us short side stories that manage to build on that universe even further in just around 15-minutes. I can’t wait to see how “All Hail the King” expands the story from “Iron Man 3”, and of course, what implications it could have for the future.
Head on over to EW to read the full story and to see some exclusive photos from the short film.
“All Hail the King” will be included with the “Thor: The Dark World” Blu-ray when it’s released on February 25th!