Here's What Hardcore Comic Book Fans Don't Like About The MCU

When fans saw Ben Kingsley playing the Mandarin in the first Iron Man 3 trailer, they were a little confused, but perhaps willing to give it a try. Then the movie came out, and many people felt cheated. It turns out Ben Kingsley wasn't the Mandarin at all, but rather an actor named Trevor Slattery playing a character. That most certainly is not the Mandarin fans knew from the comics. 

"[Director Shane] Black (and Marvel) also sufficiently wiped their ass with decades of Iron Man history, reducing Shell Head’s lone significant adversary to a punchline," wrote Sean O'Connell of Cinema Blend. 

Jim Littler of ComicBookMovie similarly (but more diplomatically) told Yahoo! Movies, “The comic-book purists, the ones who know the comic books, they did not like the Mandarin twist mainly because that’s Iron Man’s biggest villain.”

Thor: Ragnarok was one of the best entries in the MCU (evidenced by a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score), but that doesn't mean comic fans didn't take issue with the film. Some fans were simply outraged at how the Warriors Three were killed off in almost an instant. While Hogun (Tadanobu Asano) got to have a slightly more heroic downfall, Volstagg (Ray Stevenson) and Fandral (Zachary Levi) were pretty much slaughtered the second they popped on screen.

Even though two of the actors had changed since the first Thor, this still felt like somewhat of an unceremonious end for these characters, not to mention Lady Sif (Jaimie Alexander), who didn't even get to appear in the movie. At least she avoided an anticlimactic death.

In Marvel's most public case of whitewashing, they cast Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One, a Tibetan monk and sorcerer who trained Doctor Strange in the mystic arts in the source material. Marvel defended the move, saying the original design of the character was thought to be "outdated and racist," which is certainly true; Doctor Strange was created in 1963, and the Ancient One was a miasma of "Eastern" stereotypes. That said, some feel they overcorrected by giving the role to a white person.

As Variety reported, Media Action Network for Asian Americans president Rob Chan said,

“Given the dearth of Asian roles, there was no reason a monk in Nepal could not be Asian. Had [writer/director Scott] Derrickson cast an Asian as the revered leader who guides the main character to become a better human being and to develop his sorcery powers, it would’ve given a big boost to that actor’s career. While actresses deserve the kinds of bold roles usually reserved for men, white actresses are seen onscreen more than Asians of any gender. And Tilda Swinton can afford to turn down roles.”

Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor Johnson) AKA Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, respectively, are supposed to be the mutant children of Magneto. However, as Marvel Studios didn't have the rights to mutant characters, they changed the origin story for the twins, making them volunteer experimentees given superpowers by an Infinity Stone. 

Marvel Comics went ahead and supported this move by retconning these characters in Uncanny Avengers #4, giving them an origin much closer to that featured in the MCU. This fits the narrative that Marvel was trying to undermine characters beneath the Fox umbrella, but it also angered fans who wanted these characters to at least maintain their heritage.

The Atlantic quoted a Mary Sue commenter as saying, "So basically we're slapping the name on a character that bares no resemblance to her comic book self... She's not Roma. She's not Jewish. She's not a mutant. She's another [Joss] Whedon OC [original character]." 

Steve Engelhart, the creator of the character Mantis, said of Ego's "pet" in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, "That character has nothing to do with Mantis... I really don’t know why you would take a character who is as distinctive as Mantis is and do a completely different character and still call her Mantis."

He did go on to say that he didn't necessarily dislike the character, but said she was just wrong. But some vehemently disliked the character.

"It’s not just that the Mantis we got is a vastly different character from the Mantis in the comics," wrote Clara Mae. "It’s that [director James] Gunn also saw fit to strip Mantis of everything that makes her a positive character - her strength, her fiery determination, her support of other women - and replace all that instead with an abused, submissive, and infantile Asian woman stereotype." There's the rub. It's one thing to get a character wrong; it's another thing entirely to turn a strong female character into an offensively submissive stereotype.

Spider-Man: Homecoming was generally well received by fans, with an 88% Rotten Tomatoes audience score, but one thing comic book fans definitely did not like was the high-tech Spidey suit. In the movie, Peter Parker's (Tom Holland) suit gets some super upgrades from Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), resulting in a suit nearly as high-functioning as any Iron Man armor, replete with built-in AI. This Fortress of Solitude article captures a lot of the outrage, but the simplest response is always the best: