We roll along with so many weird changes in characters. What if the Mandarin changed nothing at all but his name? The idea here would be to give him a name that doesn't invoke China at all. After all, aside from his origin, does China really figure all that much into what he does? This alone could be the reason he changes his name. He thinks globally and wants to self-identify globally.

I did a quick Wikipedia check and apparently there is no Marvel character named "Monarch." (There are three DC characters with that name.) So for purposes of this thread, we'll imagine the Mandarin rebranding himself as "Monarch."

With that change in place, all Marvel would have to do is stop referencing his birth parents or childhood home town. Simply say his parents died and he was raised by an old woman in a remote village. Don't even say "in Asia." Just say "a remote village." After all, who really cares? He's not trying to be China's top dog. If we're being honest, he wants to rule the universe. He wants to be God. He thinks he rightfully should be and one day surely shall. (Of course the universe he ruled would be Hell for all but the very strongest and most vicious.)

Draw his face like Johnny Depp with goatee and mustache. Let him look like Cardinal Rilieu, the villain of the Three Musketeers novel. With muscles.

So Marvel does a story arc where the Mandarin announces his rebranding as Monarch. By the end of the arc, a whole lot of people (victims, captives) are calling him Monarch. Tony would probably resist but by the end of the arc he gives up, because he wants to communicate with all these people who only know this villain as Monarch.

Next time the character shows up he is simply Monarch, no mention ever again of having had another name.

Ten years from now, maybe Monarch could be a movie villain and even be popular in China!

I'd change his name to The Man of Iron, which would be a reference to his using mystic chi to make his flesh as hard as iron. I can even imagine the conversation between him and Stark while lifting Stark by the throat: "Tony Stark, 'the Iron Man', feh! You only wear iron. My spirit, my chi is iron, and through that chi my flesh is iron. I am the real man of iron, you crippled little gichii!"

Or maybe have it turn out that his real name is something like Tomor Sartak, and have him go by that name.

Batman has Man-Bat so why not? Just don't have him say things like "gichii" if that's a Chinese word.




I was wondering if we knew his real name. Guess we don't. Wikipedia doesn't.

But "Man of Iron" is more dramatic.

Mongolian, as is the name Tomor Sartak.

Obviously, it is only a play on words and not his real name but it has the merit of being very easy to remember and he has used this alias since 1973 ...
http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/iron_man_57-58.shtml




... and, besides, it was also the name of the Mandarin in the Iron Man Armored Adventures TV series.

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Gene_Kahn_(Earth-904913)

Call him the Monarch? Never!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz4PdpfI7zY

Yeah, but it sounds like he might be Chinese. "Khan" makes us think of "Genghis Khan" which makes us think of China. Can't have that. We need to rebrand him as having no definite ethnicity at all.

Actually, that video made me like the Monarch name even more. Right before the whole thing became stupid, it was very dramatic and awesome.

But I would probably pick "Man of Iron," I think.

OK. Can't have that. All indication of a link to China must be expunged.

"Man of Iron" is great, though. I'm leaning toward it.

Karate is Japanese, by the way. (Kung-Fu is Chinese.) Also karate is taught worldwide. Man of Iron's original trainer may have been Japanese but his training could have taken place on any continent. But if we think karate is still too Asian we can switch his training to kickboxing. It really doesn't matter. Karate is kickboxing. It's just a particular style of kickboxing.

We can also drop the word "chi" very easily. We can say he's learned to channel his life force.

You don't have to drop all of Asia, nor words like chi. Mongolia, Japan, Madripoor, and K'un-Lun are fine. You just have to drop specifically China, because China is a powerful dictatorship obsessed with its image, and only its image. It doesn't care in the slightest if characters from other parts of Asia are evil. China itself puts out enormous amounts of movies with the Japanese as outrageously, cartoonishly evil.

That's why you can still have groups like the Hand, and Ra's Al Ghul's ninja cult, Shadaloo City, and K'un-Lun's champions. Asia doesn't care, just the Chinese dictatorship.

So my thought is, keep him half Mongolian and half British, and end discussions of his nationality right there. That's not even a retcon, just an emphasis switch, which comics use as a soft-retcon all the time. Alternatively, put him in Madripoor, or K'un-Lun.

No, I don't think so. There are real people who are named Gene Kahn without being Chinese.

http://wwd.com/business-news/retail/may-co-s-ceo-search-strong-vision-needed-to-mount-a-turnaround-587457/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loe14akgbMQ
https://www.sustainablefoodnews.com/printstory.php?news_id=10456
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cascadianfarm/3720505709
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gene-kahn-3316261

Gene is a diminutive of Eugene.
Kahn is a German surname.

Even when it is spelled Khan, the name is wide spread around the world and not associated with one ethnicity in particular.

For example :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Khan
Here is the list of famous people named Khan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_(surname)#Other_usage 

Also, this Marvel villain is named Khan and he isn't associated with China
http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Khan_(Alien)_(Earth-616)

Besides, I think that Genghis Khan is the hero of the Turkish & Mongol peoples but not the Chinese Han. He is mostly remembered as the "Conqueror of the World" and not China in particular.
Some Manchu or Uyghur might appreciate Genghis Khan but not the Han.

Magneto is still Magneto. Doctor Doom is still Doctor Doom. Ultron is still Ultron. Red Skull is still Red Skull.

I do not understand the need to divorce the Mandarin from his Chinese background. Do you people think there are no villains in China?

If anything, double down. Do it right. Show how a truly heartless man would turn out if he were from China and enjoyed the privilegese of his background.

Mandarin (the poster's) constant hammering on the Mongol aspects of the Mandarin (the character's) character to the exclusion of his Chinese heritage chafes.

The dictatorship of China will not allow Chinese villains in movies. No, not even if those villains fight China. I am not personally opposed to the idea of a Chinese villain. But what I am personally opposed to or approving of is completely irrelevant. They won't allow a Chinese villains in movies, and the corporate tendency to want synergy between movies and comics means there won't be any Chinese villains in comics ever again. So I've been lobbying for a solution to that dilemma that keeps the character recognizable. A solution that takes into account Hollywood's treatment of characters like Ra's Al Ghul, the Hand, and the League of Assassins. If you have another solution, I'm happy to hear it.

The Mandarin did not appear in any of the three films. Kind of weird, no, since he's generally considered to be Iron Man's arch enemy? The reason he didn't appear is because he's Chinese. The lunatic dictators running China would not have allowed distribution of the film into their country if the villain was Chinese.

So there are three choices: (1) forego distribution in China; (2) don't use the Mandarin; or (3) use the Mandarin but don't make him Chinese.

Option (1) will never be selected. It represents lost profits. Option (2) was selected in the trilogy we've received. Option (3) remains available but certain obvious tweaks need to be made. The most obvious is to call this guy something other than "The Mandarin" as that name immediately evokes China, as it was of course meant to.

Do you see a fourth option?

My own opinion is that this guy does not need to be Chinese. He's not about China at all. He's not about being Chinese. He's not based on a Chinese legend or myth. He represents absolute narcissism with a barbarism fixation. He could be any ethnicity. The history of barbarism is available to anyone with internet access.

So don't call him "The Mandarin." Don't talk about his ethnicity. Call him "The Man of Iron" or some other name if that name is better. Leave his ethnicity vague. Leave everything else the same. It all still works. The reason it all still works is because being Chinese has never been central to his character. Even in the earliest days, he wasn't working for China. He didn't care about China at all. He was contemptuous of its leadership.

The purpose here is to allow this terrific villain to appear on the silver screen.

There are two things I think you can focus on about the character, neither of which are China-specific.

(1)Focus on how his aunt raised him to be a hateful super-soldier. That lends itself to both Angsty X-23 stuff, and angsty Roman Sionis/Penguin stuff. Very compelling, and not nationality specific at all. It does require referencing his family, but they are ethnic Mongol aristocrats and English aristocrats. Their nationality doesn't have to be mentioned beyond that.

(2)Focus on how his exploring paralleled Christopher Columbus with his enslaving the local villages, making the rings at once the gold Columbus enslaved the Taino to mine, and the guns he used to enslave them. There's nothing nation-specific about exploring and exploiting.

Don't mention his ethnicity at all. Not even the Mongol/English thing. Who cares? It has nothing to do with his character. What ethnicity is the Green Goblin? Doc Ock? The Vulture? The Absorbing Man? I could continue with villain after villain. Lex Luthor? The Joker? Maybe enough googling would yield an answer in some cases but still - who cares? The Red Skull is German and used to be a Nazi but at this point none of that matters any more. He's transcended all of that. He's no longer a Nazi and doesn't care that he's German. He aspires to be Evil Incarnate.




Just don't mention Christopher Columbus.

Quote:

Magneto is still Magneto. Doctor Doom is still Doctor Doom. Ultron is still Ultron. Red Skull is still Red Skull.

Quote:
I do not understand the need to divorce the Mandarin from his Chinese background. Do you people think there are no villains in China?

Quote:
If anything, double down. Do it right. Show how a truly heartless man would turn out if he were from China and enjoyed the privilegese of his background.

Quote:
Mandarin (the poster's) constant hammering on the Mongol aspects of the Mandarin (the character's) character to the exclusion of his Chinese heritage chafes.

So one parent's Chinese (Han?) the other parent is English and on his father's side he's descended from a Mongol?

Maybe they should stop trying to play up either his Chinese or Mongolian roots and just embrace him as a multicultural villain. He's not of the old world like he's always presented. He heralds the coming of the new world where races and cultures mix together.

Ironically his melting pot origin is very...American.

http://comicboards.com/php/show.php?rpy=ironman-2017121218011426&layout=thread

I suggested that his father's family was Manchu, not Chinese Han.

The Mandarin's relatives were probably very influent before the Chinese Revolution.

Back then, the country was ruled by the Manchu Qing dynasty of the Aisin Gioro clan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aisin_Gioro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_Xiaohuizhang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_Dowager_Xiaozhuang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borjigin#Empress_of_the_Qing_dynasty

The Aisin Gioro and Borjigit clans (= the clan of Genghis Khan) had a long history of political marriages, so the emperor had to choose a Borjigit woman to be his empress consort in order to keep up with tradition.

Some of the Mandarin's ancestors might have been Khorchin Mongols. They were the first Mongol tribe that submitted to Qing dynasty. The later emperors of the Manchu Qing dynasty rewarded the Khorchin nobles highly for this early loyalty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khorchin_Mongols
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qasar

Let's suppose that some of the Mandarin's relatives were mandarins during the reign of the Qing Dynasty before the Chinese Revolution, it would explain the nickname.