Today Marvel officially released a never before seen alternate post-credits scene for 2008’s Iron-Man that has a lot to unpack from it.
The clip which lasts roughly one minute not only features references to The Hulk but also Spider-man and The X-men. I’m gonna play the clip in just a second as it’s kinda crazy looking back at how it hints at the original plans for the MCU and how the companies looked like they may have all been working together which in light of the recent Sony/Disney situation reiterates how difficult it may be to pull a shared universe together with so many properties being owned by companies that are competing with each other.
The Clip is from the new Infinity Saga box set that is being released this year and features an introduction from Kevin Feige who discusses it in more detail, so let’s get into the clip.
Iron-Man Alternate Post Credits Scene
Ok so there’s a lot to unpack from the clip, firstly it references The Hulk, who at the time only had the Ang Lee solo film which was pretty much cast to one side in light of the Incredible Hulk Reboot which was tied to the MCU and has pretty much become the established origin story for the character. For those who don’t know Hulk is actually owned by Universal, however, they allow the character to appear in Marvel movies as long as it’s a team-up film but as they’ve never gone on to develop any solo movies featuring the character we’ve never really got an eventual end to the arc that was set up with The Leader and so on.
The clip also name drops the X-men and Spider-man who were, at the time, owned by Fox and Sony respectively. The fact that these three entities are mentioned and the Hulk eventually came to be in The MCU highlights to me that Marvel may have been negotiating with the companies at the time to include their characters in their shared universe though as this clip never got included in the final cut, it’s pretty safe to say that negotiations probably fell apart with neither company other than Universal wishing to part with their properties.
X-men And Spider-man In The MCU
It’s actually crazy that at one point there were plans to have the MCU integrated with the Fox and Sony universe so we could’ve had Tobey Maguire, Hugh Jackman and Robert Downey Junior on screen at the same time which yeah…I would have loved to have seen but I guess the studios couldn’t work things out. This is a real shame as we all know that the way that the Hulk was used in the MCU was incredible with him arguably becoming one of the best characters in the entire roster.
Still, this is an awesome little scene that fleshes out just how grand Marvel’s plans were at the time and how they’ve always wanted to pull together all of the Marvel characters into one streamlined cinematic universe to have them all working together.
It’s kind of a bittersweet clip as I would have loved to have seen the original X-men cast alongside the Avengers but I guess we must be in the wrong timeline right now. If anyone has a Quantum GPS do us a favor and go back and change this cos yeah….it would have been amazing.
Your Thoughts
Obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and if you would have liked to have seen all of them in the same film or if you’re happy that Marvel had to really pull together their b and c listers to make the MCU that we now have. Comment below and let me know!
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