If they have not seen his installments more than once, it may seem to fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that the criminal organization directed by Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung), the real Mandarin, in Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings (Destin Daniel Cretton, 2021) is a first for the saga. But, as the episode “What If … Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?” (1×06) by What would happen if…? (Ashley C. Bradley, since 2021), it is not by any means.
‘Hombre de Hierro’
The first time we heard about it is far from the adventure on Shang-Chi and nothing was made to wait: in the opening sequence of Hombre de Hierro (Jon Favreau, 2008), when one of their groups, led by Raza Hamidmi Al-Wazar (Faran Tahir), intercepts and attack Tony Stark’s convoy (Robert Downey Jr.) in Afghanistan, then kidnapping him. Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) is in cahoots with them to assassinate Howard Stark’s (John Slattery) son and take over his company.
The Ten Rings wanted to force the future Marvel superhero to build a Jericho missile for them, so the brilliant engineer takes the opportunity to manufacture the miniaturized Arc Reactor that he put on his chest later and that would determine his universal destiny. Shrapnel from a bomb had wounded him and lodged too close to his heart and, through a series of procedures with Dr. Ho Yinsen (Shaun Toub), the other captive, such a device keeps him alive.
Of course, Tony Stark escapes with his first armor, the Mark I, and something after beat them with the Mark III in Gulmira, one of the Afghan towns that the Ten Rings had taken over. Later, Raza Hamidmi Al-Wazar and his remaining men meet with Obadiah Stane to try to arrange for him to provide the terrorist group with an army of armor like Iron Man’s, but the latter betrays and murders them.
‘Iron Man 2’, ‘Iron Man 3’ and ‘All Hail the King’
On Iron man 2 (Favreau, 2010), Mr. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) sends SEALs to board a Ten Ring ship in the Yemeni port of Aden. But Tony Stark handles the matter much better. And, some time later, one of the terrorists he throws a cable to Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) to go to Monaco and take revenge on Howard Stark’s son, who deported his father, Anton (Evgeniy Lazarev), to the Soviet Union for the same goings-on as Obadiah Stane. But Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), the Black widow Marvel, ruin their heinous plans.
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On the other hand, the entrepreneur Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) concocts a ploy in iron Man 3 (Shane Black, 2013) to hide that his experiments with Extremis, a genetic manipulation technique with nanotechnology, are causing big explosions. And what comes to mind is appropriating the identity of the Ten Rings, hiring actor Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) to play the Mandarin, and make the world believe that their disasters are due to terrorist attacks. Tony Stark unmasks him and he and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) defeat him.
Aldrich Killian says before that he is the true Mandarin, but in the short All Hail the King (Drew Pearce, 2014), journalist Jackson Norris (Scoot McNairy) interviews Trevor slattery in jail and, at a certain point, it is discovered that he belongs to the Ten Rings and that the real Mandarin has organized an operation to kidnap the artist and answer to him for impersonating him.
‘Ant-Man’, ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ and ‘What if…?’
On Ant-Man (Peyton Reed, 2015.), the Ten Rings and HYDRA team up to acquire the Yellowjacket suit that Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) has designed at Pym Technologies, the company of Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) that controls, and the Pym particles, capable of increasing and decreasing mass, strength and density. But Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and Hank himself avoid the illegal purchase and take out Cross and the usual Marvel terrorists.
The story of Shang-Chi and the legend of the Ten Rings, on the other hand, does not consist only in the emergence of the protagonist as a superhero, but also in explaining the origin of the millennial group now a terrorist ruled forever by his father, Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung), the fearsome Mandarin; of his confrontation with Shang-Chi over the danger that the Dweller of Darkness, who consumes the souls of his victims, will escape in Ta Lo, the world of the deceased mother, Li (Fala Chen), and his sister Ying Nan ( Michelle Yeoh); and of the way Xu Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) inherits the leadership of the Ten Rings.
Finally, in the aforementioned episode “What If … Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?” from What would happen if…?, the villain Eric Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), whom we met at Black panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018), save Tony Stark from the onslaught of the Ten Rings, so they do not kidnap him and he does not make his miniaturized Arc Reactor or the Mark I nor, then, he becomes Iron Man who has not made such good times pass in the Marvel Universe.