I kind of saw the possibility of the Mandarin being just a spokesperson to the real villain from how the movie was advertise, and in some ways its good that they push this idea to its logical extreme -even if it kind trashes the current attempts to improve this villain in the comics from its original stereotype target. There is a meta-logic to the whole thing.
However, what I wanted to see going into this movie was for the Mandarin to be a spokes person, but also have been one of Killian's brain trust geniuses, who was using Killian as much as he was being used as being the scapegoat for the attacks. With this setup, you could actually have the Mandarin eventually reveal he had been hiding the alien tech he has studied, and had just been working with Killian to steal the perfected Extremis formula. They could have pulled that off even with the funny twist, with one good magic blast to escape from Iron Man. I wish it was just implied.
Oh well, there could always be some genius kung fu guy studying alien tech, who saw all these terrorist videos. Maybe they would be inspired to take on the image, especially if they want to annoy Tony Stark. We could still see the real deal some day, and this explanation for the image actually fits the reason for the imagine in the comics perfectly.
However, what I wanted to see going into this movie was for the Mandarin to be a spokes person, but also have been one of Killian's brain trust geniuses, who was using Killian as much as he was being used as being the scapegoat for the attacks. With this setup, you could actually have the Mandarin eventually reveal he had been hiding the alien tech he has studied, and had just been working with Killian to steal the perfected Extremis formula. They could have pulled that off even with the funny twist, with one good magic blast to escape from Iron Man. I wish it was just implied.
Oh well, there could always be some genius kung fu guy studying alien tech, who saw all these terrorist videos. Maybe they would be inspired to take on the image, especially if they want to annoy Tony Stark. We could still see the real deal some day, and this explanation for the image actually fits the reason for the imagine in the comics perfectly.