User blog comment:LoveWaffle/We Didn't See It Coming - Iron Man 3 and the Future of the MCU/@comment-5977347-20130513205536/@comment-1895174-20130517195157

''Not really, no. What's actually in the movie is what the author intended. He wasn't making excuses or anything when he said that. And you can't say it's not in the movie. The guy literally says "You wanted the Mandarin? You're looking right at him."''

Authorial intent IS crap, that's one of the first rules of analyzing any form of media - literary, cinematic, or otherwise. If it doesn't make it into the movie, it doesn't matter. And I can say it's not in the movie because that line is just a boast. The Mandarin was a character cobbled together to take the blame for things.

No, you're talking about the reasoning behind the goals, rather than the goals themselves.

The Mandarin's "goal" was to destroy America. Killian's goal was to make a buttload of money on the Extremis research by escalating the War on Terror. Two entirely different things.