Marvel fans everywhere rejoiced when Sir Ben Kingsley was cast as the archnemesis of Tony Stark, The Mandarin, in Shane Black’s ‘Iron Man 3’. Last week, we got our first look at the villain in the first trailer for the film and some fans have been kinda split on the actor’s choice of accent, but I’ve been mostly hearing cries of excitement. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, who is no doubt excited to have the veteran actor be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, weighed in recently on the Academy Award winner’s performance.
In an interview with USA Today (via Collider), Feige talked about what it was like having Kingsley on set and what the cast and crew thought of the veteran actor’s performance:
“On his last take of his first full day as the Mandarin, when they yelled ‘Cut!’ the entire crew burst into applause, spearheaded by Mr. Downey himself. It was pretty amazing to see that.
That’s what you get when you hire Sir Ben Kingsley. He’s so excited about his part and so into this character, and frankly just scaring the heck out of everybody. They’re like, ‘You’ve broken us out of our skeptical malaise!’ “
We still have a way to go until we can get the full experience of Ben Kingsley as the master of the Ten Rings in theaters, but it’s more likely that we’ll see a clip here and there before the threequel’s May release. I mean, remember how many clips we saw of ‘The Avengers’ before that came out?
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall and Jon Favreau, ‘Iron Man 3’ opens May 3rd, 2013.
