Iron Man 3 star addresses shock return to Marvel universe in Shang-Chi

*Mild spoilers follow for ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’*

One of the stars of Iron Man 3 has opened up about a return to the MCU in the forthcoming film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Mild spoilers for Shang-Chi follow...

In 2013’s Iron Man 3, Ben Kingsley played The Mandarin, a character who was long rumoured to be the movie’s villain.

The Mandarin is one of Iron Man’s main nemeses in the original Marvel Comics, though the character has faced criticism for perpetuating racial stereotypes.

In Iron Man 3, however, The Mandarin – as played by Kingsley – was revealed to be a British actor called Trevor Slattery, whose Mandarin alter-ego was cooked up to divert attention away from the real villain.

Shang-Chi, however, will see its titular hero (Simu Liu) face up against the real Mandarin, played by Tony Leung.

However, while Marvel has not officially announced the casting, it had also been heavily rumoured that Kingsley would be making an appearance in the film.

The Gandhi star attended the premiere of Shang-Chi, and spoke at a press conference about his return to the character of Trevor.

Per Digital Spy, Kingsley said: “When you hear Destin [Daniel Cretton, the film’s director], you know that the motives behind telling this story are pure, crystal clear, lucid, pure motives.They are life enhancing and they’re not patronising because they do introduce in a beautiful way, memory, ancestry, loss, and families torn apart and reunited and reconfigured.”

“Trevor [Slattery], of course, is a Shakespearean actor and he finds himself transported into a completely exotic environment. I have done 17 out of Shakespeare’s whole canon of plays so I’m sort of a Shakespearean actor.”

He added: “Thanks to the welcome that Kevin [Feige] and Destin and my beautiful colleagues gave me, as soon as I arrived on set, the fact that my colleagues were from a different culture was immaterial. Completely immaterial and irrelevant.”

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is out in UK cinemas on 3 September.