I think, and I'm sure many others do too, that Sir Ben Kingsley in Iron Man 3 as The Mandarin was a wasted opportunity. But hopefully the upcoming "All Hail The King" one-shot makes everything right with the character.
Marvel have always been very unsure on how to play out Mandarin despite having teasing his presence all this time since Iron Man and even in Iron Man 2. There’s lots of reasons why they’re unsure but I won’t go into that. You can look it up.
But to my point, the way they can make The Mandarin work is to use him as a bridge between magic and science (and/or technology also) to work the same way as they do in Asgard. Which, if you remember Thor’s explanation to Jane, “What your people used to call magic, now they call science; well in my world they are one and the same.”
And, let’s throw in aliens into the mix of things now. In the comics The Mandarin’s rings are of an alien origin. We’ve already gotten the Chitauri, The Other and Thanos appear and now Guardians of the Galaxy on the way vastly expanding the cosmic Marvel universe so there’s lots of room to include Mandarin’s rings from this.
Now how about some magic? Doctor Strange. Nobody knows what’s going on with him yet or how he’ll be played out or the magic shenanigans so we can only speculate and toss around ideas. So depending how magic works in the MCU based on Doctor Strange we can add this to Mandarin also.
Finally, to make things clearer, here is how I think would be best to do The Mandarin; make him a scientific genius (there’s your science) locate the alien rings in an acrid desert on an archaelogial trip, (there’s your aliens, and also this taking place before the setting of Iron Man 1) uses his scientific genius to master and learn how to use these rings and potentially creating the origin of magic with a mix of alien technology and science (there’s your magic and your bridge, most likely).
And from that probably Doctor Strange discover magic later on too, which I guess would make Mandarin the creator and first user of magic in the MCU and Doctor Strange adopting the title of Master of the Mystic Arts after mastering it himself.
But then there’s Scarlet Witch and Mephisto and Dormammu and Baron Mordo… I’m getting too into the idea of this, thinking too much on it and getting off topic.
Anyway, there’s my point. There is how I believe The Mandarin should be done in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And this wouldn’t be a bad thing having The Mandaring going against Iron Man using magic as it’d be a better opportunity to bridge science and magic together. See how technology fares against magic. It’s such an interesting concept. His armour is already powered by the cosmic cube in a sense anyway so there's an edge.