User blog comment:LoveWaffle/We Didn't See It Coming - Iron Man 3 and the Future of the MCU/@comment-5977347-20130513205536/@comment-3317214-20130520151353

You've got to stop explaining why it's crap to justify it not being crap.

Well, you've got to stop calling anything that's supposed to be ignored in analysis, crap. I justified its non-crappy-ness, and justified why we don't use it. Both statements can co-exist.

''It's not there. Just because Killian boasted "I AM THE MANDARIN" doesn't actually make him the Mandarin, just as Jack Dawson's boast "I'M THE KING OF THE WORLD" doesn't actually make him the King of the World.''

No, but if Jack Dawson created the position of "King of the World", and had someone else appear to fill it while he pulled the strings, then yeah, it kinda makes him the King of the World. Killian's boast counts towards reality, because he's the guy that invented the Mandarin in the first place. It's there. I'm beginning to think that you just don't want to see it.

''You keep assuming he got the tattoos because of the Mandarin. Maybe he just likes dragons. Or maybe it's because he can breathe fire. And the Mandarin doesn't have dragon tattoos.''

Well, it's more likely to be because of the Mandarin, because of the number of dragons the Mandarin had on his set, amongst other symbolic things. And although apparently, it means nothing, we know that it is what Black intended.

''Again, you're confusing strategies with goals. "The Mandarin" wanted to kill the president because he wanted to kill the president. Aldrich Killian wanted to kill the president because it would escalate the war on terror and put his inside man in the Oval Office. Two completely different things.''

Sorry. Apparently I used the word "goals" in Layman's terms. If we're gonna get technical about it, then yes, the fictional character's fictional goals differ somewhat from the Killian's. But their strategies are very similar.