If Marvel has proven one thing thus far in their cinematic universe, no one is ever really dead. As we saw in “The Avengers,” with Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) seemingly dying only to be resurrected for this fall’s TV jaunt “The Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” the long term value of a character is worth more than short term dramatic stakes. But the question is, can Marvel or current creative godfather Joss Whedon get the brass ones to actually kill off a beloved character? Well, the answer is simple: it has to make sense.
“I’d have to have a really good reason, a really great sequence for [Marvel executives] to go, ‘We’ll cut off a potential franchise, that’s fine!’ They know as any good studio does, that without some stakes, some real danger, how involved can we get?” Whedon told EW. “We don’t just rule it out across the board, but neither is the mission statement ‘Who can we kill?’ We try to build the story organically and go, ‘How hard can we make it on these people?’ You go to the movies to see people you love suffer-that’s why you go to the movies.”
So, whether or not Marvel fans will suffer as the Phase Two and Phase Three unfold remains to be seen. But until then, we can see what changes were made the pictures that have already come our way. First off, more goodies are being unveiled around “Iron Man 3” as it heads to home video next month. Yet another deleted scene has surfaced, along with animatics showing an alternate ending to the film, which includes a more conclusive death for Mandarin. And that’s not all…
As fans of the Marvel movies know, Whedon has been on the record about Wasp aka Janet Van Dyne, being in early drafts of “The Avengers” script before he eventually decided Black Widow would take the female lead role. But in this new animatic for the finale of “The Avengers” at around seventeen seconds—blink, and you’ll miss it—you’ll see a quick shot of small, floating person. So clearly at this stage of planning, the idea of including Wasp was still kicking around, but already, you can sense it was just one element too many. [Rope Of Silicon/Slashfilm/THR]