The writers behind Avengers: Endgame have opened up about some of the alternate plot lines they envisioned for the heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as they headed into the dramatic culmination of the Infinity Saga.
"The alternate versions were sort of side roads we served for characters who had left the plot behind," Christopher Markus told Vanity Fair. "It would be entertaining and it would be interesting and it would be cool to look at, but it would cause you to pause on the Thanos plot, and suck the air out of it. There was a sequence in the first movie where they went into the places in the Doctor Strange universe called the mindscape and everyone faces themselves. It was great but had absolutely nothing to do with anything."
When asked to extrapolate on how the MCU heroes might face themselves, Stephen McFeely said, "Banner meets the Hulk, I think in the arena from Ragnarok. Only one of them was getting out of there, and then that one showed up in Wakanda [in Infinity War] and he had merged. That merging that currently happens in [Endgame] in a diner, and he’s eating a huge stack of pancakes? That initially happened at the end of Infinity War."
Providing a breakdown of how this showdown between Hulk and Banner would have transpired, McFeely said, "The Hulk refuses to come out, if you remember, and [in the discarded story line] they eventually came to a realization or a compromise and he busted out of the Iron Man suit and beats the heck out of this [monster]. That whole third act is a march toward losing, and this Hulk scene is a big win, right? It’s a guy solving his problem and being a funny character because now he’s eloquent. We had to, at the last second, scrap all that, put aside all these scenes that used to have Smart Hulk, and then reshoot the first act of Endgame, going to Thanos’s country lodge, that used to have the Smart Hulk."
"We wanted everybody to have this enormous journey in the five-year jump [after the Thanos snap], and to really see, in sometimes shocking ways, how the loss had affected them," Markus added. "We hadn’t given Banner [a change] because we had transformed him earlier, and he had nowhere to go. And suddenly by needing to take it out of the first movie, it was the perfect thing."
Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, Avengers: Endgame stars Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, Don Cheadle as War Machine, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Danai Gurira as Okoye and Bradley Cooper as Rocket, with Gwyneth Paltrow Pepper Potts, Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan, Benedict Wong as Wong, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie and Josh Brolin as Thanos. The film is now available on Digital HD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD.