With nearly $4 billion in worldwide grosses and counting, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is clearly doing something right, but it's still always tempting to imagine what might have been if directors had chosen to do things a little differently. Let's do a heroic double take with these Marvel movie alternate endings you might not know about.
BLADE (1998)
The version of Blade that made it to theaters ends with our hero slaying a bunch of vampire minions before settling in for a long-awaited battle versus the movie's big bad guy, Deacon Frost. Blade vanquishes Frost once and for all with an overdose of anti-vampire poison, which he delivers by kicking a syringe right into Frost's forehead...making him blow up. Kinda cheesy, but it works. Unlike the unused alternate ending, which would have shown Frost achieving his goal of becoming the Blood God and morphing into a whirling fountain of blood...that still some how has Frost's face in it. The sequence would be pretty dumb even with today's effects technology—so you can imagine how bad it would've looked with the digital effects available during the '90s. Thankfully, we were spared in the final cut.
IRON MAN 2 (2010)
The Iron Man sequel gave Tony Stark a pair of bad guys to contend with: mad scientist Ivan Vanko and Justin Hammer, a business rival who partners with Vanko to steal the Iron Man technology. Unfortunately for Hammer, Vanko, AKA the villainous Whiplash, has a few screws loose, and he isn't above double-crossing his partner to achieve his ultimate goal of revenge against Tony. Vanko ultimately ends up dead and Hammer goes to jail, but in the alternate ending, Vanko meets his maker a little differently: blasted to bits at the last minute after kidnapping Pepper Potts.
THE WOLVERINE (2013)
The Wolverine from 2013 marked Hugh Jackman's sixth outing as the iconic Marvel mutant, but none of them gave him an opportunity to wear his classic comic book costumes. Director James Mangold looked to fix this problem in his movie, though it still hit the cutting room floor in the end. In the theatrical cut, the film closes with Wolverine boarding a jet and heading back to rejoin the X-Men. But Mangold's unused ending also includes a glimpse of his bodyguard Yukio presenting him with a box containing his iconic blue-and-yellow outfit from the comics. You should've worn it in Days of Future Past, bub.
ANT-MAN (2015)
Observant viewers may have noticed that Ant-Man left a big loose end untied. After trying to purchase Yellow jacket's size-altering technology, HYDRA agent Mitchell Carson ultimately ends up getting away with the tech during the movie's final battle. Originally, director Peyton Reed meant to finish his film by having Ant-Man face off against Carson. But the crossover demands of the Marvel Cinematic Universe dictateda teaser prelude for Captain America: Civil War, so that's a battle that will have to wait for another day—perhaps during the sequel.
IRON MAN 3 (2013)
In the original ending, Iron Man's foe the Mandarin—actually an actor named Trevor Slattery hired to distract our hero—is hauled off to prison for his part in aiding Aldrich Killian's evil schemes. That's a far kinder fate than the one he suffers in an earlier version of the script, in which Slattery uses the unstable Extrem is super-soldier serum. And like many of the other poor schmucks who used it, he goes out with a bang.
X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE (2009)
For many Marvel fans, one of the most disappointing parts of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was what the movie did with Deadpool. In Origins, the"merc with a mouth" is reduced to a pale, mute shadow of his comic book self. Director Gavin Hood threw the character's fans a bone with one of several post-credits scenes attached to different prints of the movie. One sequence shows a hand emerging from rubble and reaching out to touch Deadpool's severed head, after which his eyes open and he "shushes" at the camera. Maybe he was trying to tell the audience not to ask for refunds.
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (2014)
Comics readers know that Spider-Man has been through a lot of changes over the years, some more bizarre than others. He's always been an orphan, with the death of his parents partially driving him to play the hero after he was bit by a radioactive spider. But in a deleted ending to 2014's The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Peter's father Richard reveals himself to be very much alive. He even offers a variation on Spider-Man's iconic motto, "with great power comes great responsibility."
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND (2006)
Widely regarded as the worst entry in the X-Men series, 2006's The Last Stand made a number of unpopular decisions—like killing off a bunch of beloved characters—that took a soft franchise reboot to untangle. Even though a series of alternate endings were filmed for Last Stand, none of them would've made the movie much better. So it's easy to understand why glimpses of Beast returning to help run Xavier's school, Rogue returning to the academy with her powers returned, and Wolverine going back to Canada, all ended up on the cutting room floor. We still need Professor X to mind-wipe our memories of the Juggernaut.
AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (2015)
With the biggest cast in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Avengers franchise has more options than most when it comes to alternate endings. Director Joss Whedon took full advantage of this with 2015's Age of Ultron. He briefly entertained the notion of working Spider-Man into the story, an option nixed by the studio, who still didn't have the rights to the character during film making. Whedon also considered showing audiences a glimpse of Captain Marvel in the final scene, another idea Marvel Studios denied, since the character hadn't yet been cast for her own standalone feature. Finally, the director thought about revealing that the slain Quicksilver was alive after seemingly being gunned down during the movie's climactic fight. However, Whedon correctly realized that this would have cheapened the character's death earlier in the movie. Still...we wish we could've seen all the Avengers assemble.
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