Avengers: Endgame almost had a terrible return scene for its dead heroes. The Joe and Anthony Russo-directed flick has some iconic moments that fans loved, including the resurrection of those who were snuffed out of existence five years prior due to Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) deadly snap in Avengers: Infinity War. But apparently, there’s a version of the film devoid of the hair-raising sequence and in its place was a sillier way of bringing back the heroes.
With the Time Heist a success, albeit Black Widow’s (Scarlett Johansson) death, the Avengers went to work to assemble a secondary gauntlet to bring back all affected by The Decimation. Hulk did the honors of enacting a snap just in time before they were caught off-handed with Thanos’ onslaught at the HQ. This led into the epic final action set piece of the film that assembled all Avengers and their allies to defeat the Mad Titan once and for all. But just before the full battle ensued, only Captain America (Chris Evans) was standing against the villain and his henchmen - until the Falcon (Sam Wilson) radioed Steve, announcing the arrival of back-up with Alan Silvestri’s brilliant “Portals” theme playing in the background.
At one point, however, this wasn’t how the comeback scene played out in Endgame. Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely recalled an early version of the sequence that included “an Avengers pizza party” to ComicBook when they spoke to at San Diego Comic-Con.
The writers furthered by justifying the option they opted for the film, saying that it’s better for pacing overall. “It also meant that, even though they had effectively solved the problem they set out to solve, it didn’t feel like we ended the movie and then started it up again to fight Thanos” Markus said. McFeely backed up those sentiments by adding: “It still felt like we were working toward overcoming the final goal, so we couldn’t bring them in until we had Thanos in and it was part of this climactic [battle].” Endgame executed the monumental return for the dead heroes in a way that allowed a smaller battle between Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America against Thanos wherein each had their moment against the Mad Titan, which was very important considering that they are the main three heroes of the MCU. On top of that, it’s also the final time fans will see them all together in a fight sequence given what went down in the movie.
McFeely: “We had one where they all come back to the exact same [place], to the compound, like [snap], boom, there they are,” McFeely said at San Diego Comic-Con. “You hear, ‘Mr. Stark?’ And there’s Peter coming around the corner. Then we cut five minutes, and they’re all eating pizza. It was terrible.”
Markus: “Because there is no hard, fast, real world factuality about [the snap], we have to make up hard, fast rules in order for this thing to make sense. One of which is that everybody came back to the point where they disappeared. So then they had to get back to our battlefield, which gave us a window of time where things still had to happen.”
Since Avengers: Endgame hit theaters, the filmmakers have been openly talking about the process of working the narrative of the movie. There were moments that have long been set by Marvel Studios, but deciding on their execution was painstakingly difficult. Interestingly, a lot of the things from previous versions of the film sound hilariously bad, but the fact that they were all willing to entertain those ideas helped them reach the final version of the movie. And considering that it’s now the biggest film in the world, not to mention the fact that critics generally liked it, needless to say that the made all the right creative choices.
More: Thor’s Avengers: Infinity War Arc Came Out of Panic
Source: ComicBook
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