User blog comment:TheOne1000/Mandarin Twist/@comment-1895174-20131028180307/@comment-4652104-20131029081700

I think the devil is in the phrase "Killian is [insert your comicbook villain here]". Well, he is neither of them.

He sure as hell isn't Aldritch Killian (he has his name and he is a scientist, but there the resemblance ends).

Neither is he Mallen. Mallen is a street-Nazi given powers, Killian is a corrupt businessman. Apart from the powers they have literally nothing in common. And there is like two dozen people with the same powers in the film.

Is he AIM's Scientist Supreme? Well, partly, he is AIM's CEO, but he never uses the title, and AIM (film) is not really AIM (comic).

Is he the Mandarin? Well, not literally, he isn't. And neither is Trevor. But in some ways they both are. In a way Trevor is the Mandarin - he is the face that appears on TV and he uses the name. That he turns out to be a joke? That IS the best moment in the film. Truly ingenious on so many levels. Killian on the other hand is the real villain here. If you add to it the various details (love of rings, Asian motifs), which we assume are deliberate, and take the Mandarin as depicted in recent comics, as a point of reference, than in some ways Killian is the real Mandarin (he even says so himself - he seems to identify with the Mandarin persona on some level).

So is he Killian, Mallen, Scientist Supreme, Mandarin? Personally I think the character he most certainly is not is Mallen (for the reasons I mentioned). As for the other three? Well, he is neither of them and all of them at once.