Marvel's The Avengers was almost a very different movie at one point Not only was it going to be directed by Iron Man's John favro but it would have featured the WASP instead of Black Widow and Red Skull as the main villain instead of Loki not to mention Edward Norton returning as the Incredible Hulk so let's dive in and find out what happened behind the scenes to arrive at the movie we got and also take a look at what could have been the Avengers when John Fabro signed on to direct Iron Man he originally planned to
feature the Mandarin as that film's antagonist but was talked out of it by comic book writer Mark Miller who argued that the Mandarin was too Fantastical for Fab's more grounded approach to Iron Man instead Fabro would pivot and make obadia stain the villain after Jeff Bridges was cast in the role even though stain was originally planned to be the antagonist in the sequel the Mandarin would then be saved for the third film as favro would say that once Thor and all that magic is introduced into the MCU the mandrin and his 10 magical Rings won't
feel so out of place he likened it to building up to the emperor in Return of the Jedi whose forc lightning may have felt out of place in A New Hope in fav's Vision the third film also would have been the Avengers and favro planned to be in the director's chair however after Iron Man 2 everything changed during negotiations to get favro to return the director believed marel lalom which made him feel underappreciated after being largely responsible for the first film success and while they eventually came to an agreement after a lengthy and difficult negotiation
Marvel didn't want to pay that kind of money to a director again and made it a point to seek out an upand cominging director who they could pay significantly less to direct The Avengers ultimately choosing Jos Weeden for the job the feeling however was was mutual as Marvel allegedly interfered heavily with Fab's work on Iron Man 2 turning the project into an infomercial for the Avengers and pushing him into making it without a fully realized script as the film was rushed into production disappointed with how Iron Man 2 turned out and as Mickey RoR put
it frustrated with Marvel breaking his balls Fabro had little desire to return to direct The Avengers if it meant facing the same level of creative interference he'd eventually say going from directing and creating this world to just being happy Hogan and the Avengers would be I'm not going to lie strange to write the film Marvel hired Zack Penn who had written the first draft of Edward Norton's The Incredible Hulk and his version of The Avengers had some major differences as he spent four years writing and rewriting while phase one continued to evolve and take shape
similar to Fabro pen had concerns over how the fantasy elements of Thor would fit alongside the grounded high-tech science of Iron Man as a result Penn significantly reduced Thor's role in the film and felt he should debut in The Avengers with his own solo film to follow on top of that not only did he introduce Loki much later in the story but there are also discussions about using Red Skull as the main villain instead which is why he wasn't killed off in Captain America and instead transported through a portal by the Tessa to set him
up to return in a future film even Hugo weaving who played Red Skull said that he signed up for three pictures assuming he'd return as a villain for The Avengers however once Chris Hemsworth was cast as Thor Penn realized that Hemsworth embodied the character perfectly making Thor a natural fit for the Avengers the same went for Loki after Tom hson was cast it became clear to everyone that he was the ideal choice to be the villain in The Avengers Penn even wrote a scene where everyone attempts to pick up Thor's iconic Hammer which of course
ended up being included in Age of Ultron in respect to the Hulk pen not only really wanted Edward Norton to return as he felt he was perfect as Banner but assumed he would too however Marvel decided not to bring him back for a number of reasons first Norton asked to rewrite Zack Pen's Incredible Hulk script which to be fair both that film's director Louis larier and Marvel's Kevin feige agreed was necessary as they also felt the script needed Improvement however while Norton rewrote the inedible Hulk script before production he continued making changes throughout filming on
his own which reportedly caused tension between him the director and the other cast members when the final edit of the film admitted many of the scenes he had written Norton threatened not to promote the movie if Marvel didn't put the scenes back in after parting ways with Norton figy would criticize the actor by stressing the need to replace him with another actor who embodies the creativity and creative Spirit of Marvel's other cast members left without an actor to play Hulk pen rewrote the Avengers script so that Banner almost never appears in the film and instead
just wrote scenes for Hulk including one where he goes on a rampage in New York this was set up by the Incredible Hulk director Louis larier at the end of his film as he purposely left the last shot ambiguous so that if Marvel wanted to make Hulk the villain in The Avengers which larier felt Marvel should do then the last shot of banner opening his eyes and smirking could be interpreted as Banner not being able to control the Hulk Who The Avengers would then have to team up to stop eventually Norton would be replaced by
Mark Ruffalo which forced the filmmakers to redesign the Hulk yet again but this time they tried to make the green monster look a lot more like the actor who played him while also having Ruffalo perform the motion capture himself once Jos Weeden was hired to direct and after he read Penn script he was heavily critical of it and told Kevin feige to pretend that this draft never happened opting to start over from scratch feige agreed only dictating that the film maintain the same structure and include Loki as the main villain this would net Zack Penn
a story by credit which Weeden tried to fight and while Penn hoped to collaborate on the rewrite Weeden had no interest thinking little of Penn's work as pen would later say my bonus is based on my credit so literally million milons and millions of dollars that just came out of my pocket went into js's pocket but at least it's not like on the Hulk where I got replaced by the lead actor it should be noted that Marvel started making the Avengers before either Thor or Captain America were released and while Iron Man was a huge
hit Edward Norton's The Incredible Hulk didn't exactly set the world on fire which is why Robert Downey Jr initially pushed Weeden to make Tony Stark the lead character in The Avengers telling the filmmaker that Stark needs to be in the opening sequence and drive the whole movie to his credit Weeden would try it as the movie originally opened with Iron Man in the m of a battle against a throwaway villain eventually Weeden felt it didn't work and argued that the film should be an ensemble with each hero being an arm of the octopus Weeden also
worried that Loki wasn't a big enough threat to take on Earth's Mightiest Heroes feeling that the audience would be rooting for the overdog this led Weeden to write a version of the film that included obedia stain's son Ezekiel as an additional villain who would have aided Loki in opening the portal out for revenge over the death of his father however after reading it feige bluntly said yeah no for Iron Man 2 Emily Blunt was originally offered for the role of Black Widow but had no choice but to turn it down as she had scheduling conflicts
with Gulliver's Travels which she was contractually obligated to do after Scarlet Johansson replaced her she too had potential scheduling conflicts with the Avengers worried she wouldn't be available we didn't cut her character from the script and replaced her with the WASP who was a founding member of the team in the comics however unlike the other characters who were all introduced in previous Marvel movies The Wasp would have debuted in The Avengers which would have required more exposition to explain her Origins and Powers as well as character development to give her a proper Arc and this
would have come at the expense of the other characters as Weeden would later say he had overcompensated and Rewritten the movie to be about the WASP who we wanted Zoe desel to play then Senior vice president of Marvel Studios Jeremy latchum would even comment that the was was the funniest character in the whole movie and well written too however once Johansson's scheduling conflicts were worked out we didn't have to scramble to rewrite the script yet again in order to put Black Widow back in the film and while Hawkeye was introduced in Thor there still wasn't
much known about the big screen version of the character heading into Avengers which is why Weeden wrote a detailed backstory for him but like the WASP realized he would be unable to reference any of it due to time constraints allegedly during development Barton was envisioned as a circus performer trained by criminals who manipulate him into fighting the team even going back to Zack Penn's draft Hawkeye was the Avenger who was captured and interrogated near the start of the film instead of Black Widow at the end of the film after Iron Man falls back to Earth
unconscious he originally woke up and asked what's next on the day they shot it however Robert Downey Jr thought the line sucked and asked Weeden for something funnier he could say thinking quickly weed didn't thought back to actor Nicholas Brendan's audition for the part of Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer a show Weeden created after finishing the audition Brandon turned to everyone and asked does anyone feel like schwarma I feel like some schwarma not only did this line win over Weeden prompting him to cast Brendan in the role but Weeden gave it to Downey to
say at the end of The Avengers however after finishing the movie Weeden thought it would be even funnier to then show The Avengers eating at a schwarma restaurant prompting Weeden to go back and put a schwarma restaurant in the final battle and then film an addition scene of The Avengers eating there which they shot after the film's world premiere there was just one problem though Chris Evans grew at his beard after the movie was done filming for his upcoming role in Snowpiercer this is why cap isn't eating in the final scene because they gave Evans
a prosthetic jaw to cover up his beard which not only looked bad but made him unable to eat so Evans covered it with his hand so you couldn't see it a post-credit scene featuring Rod's war machine was also considered with him arriving late to New York only to find the battle already over the first cut of the film was also much longer and slightly different for example fur superiors from the world Security Council were shot brightly and in weeden's words looked more like news anchors originally Weeden felt they should be people who care but are
just wrong until he realized it didn't work and they should be straight up evil so he reshot them in the shadows and made the screens their on big and imposing cap also had several scenes highlighting his struggles with life in the present which would be further explored in Winter Soldier Weeden also wanted to humanize the final battle and show what it's like for people on the ground which is why he shot several scenes with a waitress who is introduced earlier in the film serving Steve r Rogers he also had several scenes with a cop who
was given a chitauri weapon by cap however Weeden came to realize that the audience wasn't as interested in following these people as he initially thought they wanted to see their heroes in action instead looking back it's hard to comprehend how big a risk The Avengers Was Not only was Marvel of fledgling Independence Studio but they had only made two Iron Man films in The Incredible Hulk before they went all in on the Avengers which entered production before Captain America or even Thor came out and if those films had failed it probably would have meant that
the Avengers would have come out at on arrival even the film's first writer Zack Penn was advised not to take the gig as it could hurt his career once the film inevitably failed however it didn't and like The Avengers it took a group of extremely talented individuals coming together to make it a success thanks for watching everybody and don't forget to like And subscribe to bullets and Blockbusters for more great content
