IRON MAN 3 Villain Reveal Was Originally a Woman But Corporate Changed it to Sell Toys That Were Never Made
IRON MAN 3 is a movie many fans have a hard time getting behind and even critics weren't sure if they really liked this movie as evident by its 79-percent score on RottenTomatoes. That score is only the seventh best Marvel Studios film score, out of 13 total movies. And then there's many of the hardcore comic book fans who still hate the Mandarin twist to this very day.
But would that twist have been more acceptable and maybe fun had the true villain reveal been a female who was behind the scenes instead of Aldrich Killian? Maybe, but according to Black he has now revealed that a female villain was in the IRON MAN 3 script but a certain Marvel executive told Black to remove the her and make it a male villain instead. All of this because the exec wanted to sell more toys of a male villain character.
"We replaced a lot of things. The plot went this way and that way. Stéphanie Szostak’s character was bigger at one point and we reduced it. Rebecca Hall’s character was bigger at one point and we reduced it.
"All I’ll say is this, on the record: There was an early draft of Iron Man 3 where we had an inkling of a problem. Which is that we had a female character who was the villain in the draft. We had finished the script and we were given a no-holds-barred memo saying that cannot stand and we’ve changed our minds because, after consulting, we’ve decided that toy won’t sell as well if it’s a female.
"So, we had to change the entire script because of toy making. Now, that’s not Feige. That’s Marvel corporate, but now you don’t have that problem anymore... New York called and said, 'That’s money out of our bank.' In the earlier draft, the woman was essentially Killian – and they didn’t want a female Killian, they wanted a male Killian. I liked the idea, likeRemington Steele, you think it’s the man but at the end, the woman has been running the whole show. They just said, 'no way.'
"And I don’t know if it was Ike, I don’t know who it was. They never told me who made the decision, we just got that memo one day and it was about toy sales. That’s all I know."
Wow. Just wow.
The worst part, which is real kick-to-the-crotch, is that there was never a toy or figure made of Aldrich Killian in the IRON MAN 3 merchandise except for one lone minifigure in the above LEGO set. Seriously. That was it.
So the fact that an exec went with using the toy sales excuse to change what could have been a fantastic surprise of a female mastermind villain into a male villain reveal just hurts in all the wrong spots. Thankfully, Marvel Studios and its braintrust are no longer under the authority or supervision of Marvel's New York office and they now report directly to Disney Studios head Alan Horn in Burbank, Cali.
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