Remember back in the first Iron Man film when shortly after Tony Stark had embarked on his road trip across the treacherous terrains of Afghanistan he was attacked by a terrorist organization? Well, if you think back to that scene and the moments that followed you might recall that the terrorists were said to have been members of "The Ten Rings," a fictional organization named after the ten mystical rings worn by the Mandarin, one of Stark's greatest comic book adversaries.

It seems that with actor Ben Kingsley on board to play the Mandarin in the upcoming Iron Man 3 movie, the likelihood that we'll see another mention (or perhaps even a resurgence) of 'The Ten Rings' is pretty good. Maybe 'The Ten Rings' will be referred to once again as an actual terrorist group? Or perhaps they will literally be…well, ten rings. Either way, we may have caught wind of some proof that the group will at least be mentioned in some way in the next Iron Man movie.

Earlier today the Latino Review posted about an interesting observation; the hats that will be worn by members of Iron Man 3's movie production team make a mention of The Ten Rings. So will 'The Ten Rings' refer to the terrorists we saw in the first Iron Man movie, or will The Mandarin literally wear ten rings, one on each finger, in Iron Man 3? Although we are betting on the former, it seems we will have to wait and see. What do you think? Are you looking forward to seeing The Mandarin play the bad guy in Iron Man 3?

Source: Latino Review

I really dug the idea of the Ten Rings being a terrorist group. It was a cool way to contextualize the thing that gave Mandarin his power (his army in this case, as opposed to a bunch of magic jewelry) in a way that fit well within the MCU.

If they are keeping with the terrorist idea then they better come up with something that makes them an actual threat to Iron Man

AWESOME

Cool, its good thing the avengers and thor set the Marvel cinematic universe for magic craziness, otherwise I don't think the mandarin would have worked in these movies

Not too keen on Mandarin but this sounds like a different approach. Wonder how the "Ten Rings" will play out in the movie.

thank god mandarin's finally in an iron man movie...

@mr.obvious said:

thank god mandarin's finally in an iron man movie...

maybe they're just referring to the terrorists from the first movie, the ten rings. He's probably the real leader.

in the picture above, that fool looks like he has lucky charms stuck to his knuckles. Lol

cool

O goody

This should pose a threat to Stark

could possibly be like the league of shadows in the same sort of mission or they could just have both the rings and the armies.

or something different like mandarin gets some extremis in him.........or that whole ezeikiel stane turning people into bombs

Very nice indeed.

did the ten ring group was in Iron Man 1?

The Ten Rings terrorist organization probably worships the Mandarin and got there name because they worship it. Its all starting to come together....

Maybe the ten rings will be a terrorist group but with some magic rings (or do-dads since Iron Man movies seem be keeping with science instead of magic) Then call Tony out to get rid of Iron Man.

My original thought was that the objects called The Ten Rings would have been the keys to a doomsday weapon (in this case the Extremis Plague), but with the introduction of magic (or some advanced alien science that LOOK like magic) in Thor, the Ten Rings could still retain the same basic origin as the comics.

Of course they will, it's the Mandarin after all

I've been waiting for the Mandarin since Iron Man so I'm excited to see him come to life, though I hope they retain the actual ten rings that he wears. I'm sure they have come up with some science based explanation for them so it'll be very interesting to see how they pull it off.

He better at least wear 10 rings, even if they aren't super powered, but seriously they've already introduced aliens and gods and shit, there is no legitimate reason they couldn't do it. say Thanos gave them to him and boom you tie it in to the next avengers movie just like that.

I think the 10 rings symbolize the council of this organzation with each ring being a different member. That would be way cooler than actual 'magic' rings. Besides the LOTR films are still in recent enough memory, and what with "The Hobbit coming up", it's too blah to have more magic rings.

He better do some armor busting with karate chops

What if the leaders of each of the "Ten Ring Terrorists" keeps a ring with them, and Mandrin collects the rings from each of the leaders.... hmmmmm

Gotta be a reason their called the Ten Rings lol, why not have best of both worlds

I want the 10 rings to be actual rings of power.

I want to see the Mandarin be the adversary in this film, very much so. Ten Rings though..that has such a terrorist organization RING to it (pardoning the pun) that I think that should be the route they take in the movie.

Very interesting to see how the terrorist group will tie in to the Mandarin in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Sweet

It's about time we got to Iron Man's ARCH NEMISIS.

I continue to be surprised (in a good way) with just how far Marvel studios seems willing to take things. People claimed for years that comic book movies would never be able to get into the "cosmic" side of things and Marvel's doing just that. I suspect that yes, in some way, shape, or form, the Mandarin will have 10 "magic" rings, and they might not even be of Asgardian make or from Thanos, but instead another alien technology altogether. After all, Marvel's headed towards Guardians of the Galaxy, which will introduce tons more alien races than just the Chitauri and (effectively) Asgardians.

Heck, they might even leave the door open for Fin Fang Foom (who's simply another alien, if a big one). Or may even have him show up in Iron Man 3 for the climax (since he's been linked with the Mandarin in the past).

I always figured the Ten Rings was secretly led by the Mandarin and they were just his "hand of god" so to speak.

Smart.

I say even though I enjoyed Mandarin in some of the comic arcs I am not looking forward to this ,but I do like Kingsley in the role.If other armor were involved I'd rather see Red Dynamo and some post Cold War theme that brings the Soviet era Super armor out of mothballs and upgraded.Maybe we could see the abandoned Soviet space platform that was featured in the Black Widow mini about 2 yrs. ago.

@Jonny_Anonymous: the mandarin is that threat. If you noticed in the iron man 3 trailer, its a lot more darker and stark has realised that being a hero isn't just clear sailing so someone must be a threat. A big one.