>>94127164I thought the premise of a Yellow Peril villain actually being a false flag used to exploit people's fears of middle eastern terrorism was genius.
However, its execution involving the meme actor was pretty mediocre, and Killian himself was utterly shit-tier and underwhelming as fuck. You don't promise your audience a halfway decent discount Fu-Manchu and then turn around and give them a Bart Simpson instead, they completely fumbled the follow-up to that twist and subsequently ruined the whole thing. If Killian was at least mildly interesting himself, or if A.I.M had anything else better to do than use that retarded Extermis virus, now that would've been one thing. But they didn't. Instead they put all their eggs into one basket, and completely half-assed the rest of the plot because they thought one kinda clever idea would be enough to carry the whole film.
Why is it always the Mandarin that people complain about anyways, when nobody's ever gave a flying fuck about him before? Sure his "ten rings" gimmick is pretty cool in theory, but that's the full extent of his appeal; just an aesthetically interesting concept without very much substance. I'm far more pissed that A.I.M was wasted and then totally forgotten. Why couldn't we have gotten a Zola-esque/uncanny valley M.O.D.O.K, or even the yellow beekeeper uniforms instead? They might as well have just made Trevor the villain, just having a laugh or with some bullshit ideological motive tacked on, even that would have been an improvement.
