Avengers: Endgame Nearly Featured 3 Different Armors for War Machine

As the culmination of a decade-plus of Marvel Cinematic Universe storytelling, Avengers: Endgame had quite a lot of characters to feature and evolve. The nature of the Endgame‘s costumes was debated about quite a lot in the time leading up to the film’s release, as fans were eager to see what Earth’s Mightiest Heroes would be wearing in the fight against Thanos (Josh Brolin). In the case of James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle), that nearly involved a few different suits of War Machine armor. The recently-released Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame: The Art of the Movie book reveals that Rhodey was initially supposed to wear three different armors throughout the film, each of which would have had a different significance on the plot.

“War Machine was an interesting process because at the time when we were working on it, there were going to be three War Machine armors,” concept artist Phil Saunders says in the book. “There was going to be the Mark III armor from Civil War that he crashed in, which was going to be fixed. The Mark IV was going to be used to go back to Morag, and there was a whole sequence where he was underwater. That suit was going to be featured heavily there, and then it was going to get dissolved away by the acidic water — which would lead him to have to put on another suit, the Mark V, which we were calling the cosmic War Machine armor, which was going to be used for battle in space.”

While we didn’t get to see all three of these War Machine suits in the finished film, the creative process that went into designing them is certainly interesting.

What do you think of this Avengers: Endgame concept art? Do you wish that War Machine would have worn three suits in the film? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Upcoming Marvel Studios projects include Black Widow on May 1, 2020, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier in Fall of 2020, The Eternals on November 6, 2020, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on February 12, 2021, WandaVision in Spring 2021, Loki in Spring 2021, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on May 7, 2021, Spider-Man 3 on July 16, 2021, What If…? in Summer 2021, Hawkeye in Fall 2021, Thor: Love and Thunder on November 5, 2021, and Black Panther 2 on May 6, 2022.