Remembering the Alternate Opening to 'Iron Man 2' We Wish Happened

Iron Man 2 originally had a very different scene which opened the film, loaded with Tony Stark [...]

Iron Man 2 originally had a very different scene which opened the film, loaded with Tony Stark sarcasm and Pepper Potts.

The film, by the time of release, opened with Iron Man plummeting from a plane and dodging fireworks at the Stark Expo. However, the film was originally going to include a sequence which showed how nervous Tony was to head down to the event. In fact, he was up in a plane, huddled over a toilet vomiting. Pepper desperately tried to help him and tell him that it was time to go but Tony's sarcastic ways lead to her tossing his helmet from the plane and forcing him to chase it.

The sequence was likely a bit too dark for Marvel's taste at the time, as jokes about menstrual cycles and Tony's mentality were peppered into it. As seen in the video above, the sequence never got the special FX treatment so Robert Downey Jr. is seen in his incomplete Iron Man suit with its mo-cap details attached.

Since Iron Man 2, Marvel Studios and Disney have pushed the boundaries of their content. Most recently, Avengers: Infinity War featured one of the heaviest and darkest finishes for any of their films. Such a move was, in part, seen as a risk for the film's financial success at the box office but may have since proved to the studios that heavy story beats won't keep moviegoers from heading to theaters.

"It's an innovators market, I think," Joe Russo said. "And I think that theatrical filmmaking since the advent of social media is driven by social media and the most successful films are the ones that are driving conversations. I think that's Marvel has succeeded and tied up with sort of global interconnectivity and people being able to express their feelings and their passion for these movies as each one unfurls. So, we ultimately were interested, not only as fans and as storytellers, in real emotional catharsis and taking the audience on a journey. We think we live in a really complicated world and we wanted to tell a really complicated story."

Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War are now playing in theaters. Ant-Man and The Wasp is set for release on July 6, 2018. Captain Marvel will follow it on March 6, 2019, with the untitled Avengers 4 set to tie everything about the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a bow on May 3, 2019.

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