Ten Rings

The Ten Rings is a fictional organization in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It is a clandestine criminal organization founded one thousand years ago by Xu Wenwu, an immortal warlord, and named after his mystical ten rings. An original creation for the MCU, the group's name is an homage to the Mandarin's ten cosmic rings in the Marvel Comics. The organization appears in the films Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Iron Man 3 (2013), Ant-Man (2015), and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021); as well as the One-Shot All Hail the King (2014) and the miniseries Ms. Marvel (2022). The Ten Rings were later integrated into the mainstream Marvel Universe. Concept and creation Iron Man's Marvel Comics premiere in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963) was a collaboration between editor and story-plotter Stan Lee, scriptwriter Larry Lieber, story-artist Don Heck, and cover-artist and character-designer Jack Kirby. In his origin story, wealthy industrialist Tony Stark is injured and taken prisoner by hostile forces in war torn Vietnam, but escapes his captors after building and donning a suit of powered armor. Due to the floating timeline of the Marvel Universe, the writers have updated the setting in which Stark is injured and builds his armor. In the original 1963 story, it was the Vietnam War. In the 1990s, it was updated to be the first Gulf War, and in the 2000s it was updated again to be the war in Afghanistan. Screenwriter Alfred Gough said in 2007 that he had developed an Iron Man film for New Line Cinema which included the Mandarin as the villain, conceiving the character as a younger Indonesian terrorist who masquerades as a rich playboy Tony Stark is acquainted with. However, while working on Iron Man (2008), director Jon Favreau omitted the Mandarin in favor of Obadiah Stane as the main antagonist of the film, believing that the character and the fantasy elements of his rings felt unrealistic and were more appropriate for a sequel with an altered tone. Instead, the Mandarin is referenced via the Ten Rings terrorist group in the film, inspired by the Mandarin's ten rings. The Mandarin had originally been envisioned as a rival to Tony Stark with a building of his own right next to Stark Industries, with the Mandarin eventually drilling a hole underneath Stark Industries to steal all of Stark's technology for himself; associate producer Jeremy Latchman described that story as "crazy terrible" and "underwhelming".