This twist was so shitty. Even if you discount the fact it isn't even close to comics Mandarin, it's shitty from a story point of view.
Had this been a stand alone movie and not the (probably) final movie of a trilogy, it wouldn't have been so bad. But it was. We got literally no closure on the Ten Rings or an explanation for how Killian was associated with them in the first place. Sure we know NOW he wasn't part of them, but that's only due to All Hail the King. An actual explanation wasn't given in the movie itself.
The Ten Rings played a pretty sizable part in Iron Man 1, they were a minor part in Iron Man 2, and then in 3 it seemed like we were finally getting an explanation on who they were. What's their origin, what's with the name Ten Rings, who's their boss...but we got none of that. We just got white businessman #3 as the main antagonist with very little answers on the actual Ten Rings group itself.
With the Iron Man movies seemingly being done and finished we can assume we'll never get closure on any of this, which is a shame. I was actually looking forward to them finally playing a main antagonist role.
