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Huffington Posts' venerable wordsmith, Mike Ryan spoke with Sir Ben Kingsley about all things Trevor Slattery in celebration of the latest Marvel One-Shot, All Hail the King. Kingsley is finally free to field questions about the misdirection of his role in Iron Man 3, which he says he had no qualms executing. "I wasn't worried [about fan reaction]. I truly wasn't worried. When I worked a lot in the theater before I became heavily involved in movies, which I love, I was privileged to play a lot of Shakespearian roles that most people in the audience were familiar with and everyone has their preconception of ... so, it had to be my Mandarin. It had to be my Trevor."
Continuing on about fan feedback, Kingsley states, " I don't get too heavily involved with feedback; I express and then I'm done. I paint my portrait and then I put my brushes down and I walk away. But it has filtered through to me in a gentle way that very, very, very few people indeed were upset by that twist. Even avid Marvel fans, they went along with it." Hmmm....while, there are a lot of comic book fans that loved the twist, I dare say, there's an equal number that were incredibly upset by it. Lucky for Marvel Studios, in the grand scheme of things, comic book fans (while numerous around these parts) make up only a tiny fraction of the box office. Sure, we have the power to get a snowball rolling downhill but once it reaches the colossal size of a Marvel Studios, we comic book fans become a small minority of its fan base. And in terms of Iron Man 3, the 'casual' superhero fan absolutely loved the twist.
Moving on, I'm sure there are a lot of folks that want to know if we've seen the last of Trevor? "I honestly don't know," said Kingsley. He continued, "I know they're keen to seeing how this film goes. They were all there at the screening that they kindly invited me to -- all the guys, they love it. I honestly don't know. Trevor is so unpredictable anyway, I can't answer for him! He's mad -- he's probably lying in a pool of blood and Guinness somewhere." Oh, I'm sure somebody at Marvel knows....
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"A documentary filmmaker interviews the now-famous Trevor Slattery from behind bars."
Running Time: 14 minutes
Release Date: Feb 4, 2014
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Starring: Ben Kingsley, Scoot McNairy, Lester Speight
Directed by: Drew Pearce
Written by: Drew Pearce (screenplay) Stan Lee (comic book) Jack Kirby (comic book) Don Heck (comic book) Larry Lieber(comic book)