All Hail the King

With Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings about to be released, Disney have quietly added the one-shot All Hail the King to Disney+. Today I thought I'd discuss the one-shot and wonder what happens next. 

Marvel produced "one-shots" alongside some of it's phase one and two releases when the films were released on DVD and later Blu-ray and they helped inspire the TV shows Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter. The fifth and final one-shot, to date anyway, was All Hail the King which was released as an extra on the DVD and Blu-ray of Thor: The Dark World and follows on from the events of Iron Man 3. 

The one-shot opens with a journalist heading into prison for the final day of interviews with Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley). Of course Slattery was the British actor who portrayed the role of the Mandarin for Aldrich Killian and his fabricated Ten Rings group. 

Much of the short is played for comedy. We see Slattery protected by many of his fellow prisoners and he appears to be living in a relatively luxurious cell. The journalist attempts to delve into Slattery's life story a little and we are given the impression that he had a relatively normal childhood with child Slattery's first acting role being a minor part in a Shakespeare production. My favourite part of the short is when we see the title sequence of an 80s TV show pilot called Caged Heat (which was the working title for Iron Man 3) which is utterly hilarious. 

As the short daws towards it's conclusion the journalist suggests that Slattery's portrayal of the Mandarin had angered people. Slattery says he has seen the 'message boards', no doubt a reference to the disappointment of many fans in the way Iron Man 3 treated the Mandarin. The journalist says he is actually talking about the real Ten Rings and it's a revelation to Slattery that they are indeed real. A gun is released from the video camera, presumably the only way it could have been smuggled into the prison, and it's revealed that the journalist is actually a member of the Ten Rings and is there to break Slattery out of prison and take him away to the Ten Rings. 

We know that the Ten Rings and the real Mandarin are going to appear in Shang-Chi so does this mean that Marvel have been planning for all this time? Well it doesn't seem to be the case as the writer and the director of the short deliberately left things ambiguous and even said when talking about Easter eggs and nods to the comics that he was waiting to see if "some of it sticks and some of it remains just a kind of charming nod". 

There had been rumours that Ben Kingsley would be reprising his role as Slattery in Shang-Chi for a while and a leaked image seemed to confirm it- the release of this short gives even further credence to the idea. So what are they going to do with this character? The thing Marvel will no doubt answer is what the real Mandarin wanted with Slattery. It could be that he is utterly furious with Slattery and wants to punish and maybe even torture the man. On the other hand the real Mandarin may be quite shrewd and will see some use in Slattery, maybe using his skills to help with public relations or perhaps just having Slattery around could help to contribute to the legend of the Ten Rings. 

Either way, I have the feeling that somehow or other Slattery hasn't come out of it too badly. One of the defining things about this character is that he seems to always land on his feet. An encounter with Iron Man proved no real issue and a prison sentence led to him being adored and living quite happily. Wherever he has been since then I think there's a good chance that he's doing quite nicely and I wonder if he might finally pick up some proper combat skills. Could be see a trained-up Slattery facing off against Shang-Chi- it would be fun if that did happen! 

I think we can assume that Shang-Chi will defeat his father the Mandarin in the film so what would that mean for Slattery? I wonder if there's a small chance that he could actually acquire the title and actually become the real Mandarin at the end of the film. I think it's either death or glory for this character and I can't wait to see what Marvel will do with him next.