From the start of 2008, with the release of the first Iron Man movie Marvel has always managed to hit the nail on the board without bending it. But there are a few instances where Marvel messed up in turns of storyline or the introduction of characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s narrative.
Marvel has equipped itself with a vast crew of cast and sometimes these casts have some of their ideas which are often implicated in the storyline that sometimes is good, but sometimes tend to change the complete narrative of the story. Marvel has managed to get by many of them without a scratch or even a mention of them by the die-hard fans of their favorite superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but some of them could not escape the eyes of the most hardcore Marvel fans and have been brought into attention. Here, we will discuss characters that Marvel Studios wishes could have introduced differently in the Marvel chapters.
War Machine
Iron Man (2008) saw Terrence Howard in the supporting role of James Rupert “Rhodey” Rhodes and we saw him do a damn good job while he was at it. From the start to the end, he kept up the roles of a nation loving patriot, a good friend, and a badass defense personal who was adored across the classes of intelligence agencies to be called in to review any kind of secret military tests that the government may have approved that no one except him would have known about.
With the huge success of Iron Man and Robert Downey Jr.’s pay skyrocketing through the roof, Marvel Studios had to reconsider whom to cast in the second movie of Iron Man because of a budget restriction. That is when Don Cheadle was brought in to replace Terrence and if Marvel knew that 10 years down the line this franchise would be the biggest money churner for them, they would have decided to stick with Terrence considering how Don had represented War Machine in the movie franchise.
Sharon Carter
Captain America aka Steve Roger’s life took a turn for the good as the super-soldier serum bonded well with his body and got him the life he always dreamed of and the woman he wished to spend the rest of his life with. But fate had other plans and had Steve frozen in Ice for 70 years while the love of his and the world he knew had to move on without him.
In the Civil War sequel, he attends the funeral of the woman of his dreams and 2 days after the funeral confides in Peggy Carter’s granddaughter Sharon Cater. Sharon plays an important role in the modern S.H.I.E.L.D and is also considered as one of the best operatives S.H.I.E.L.D ever had. It was kind of weird to see Captain America get close to someone who is the granddaughter of the woman he loved. It may have been Marvel Studios one of the many blunders which we believe they wanted to change because that was the last time, we saw Sharon Carter.
Netflix series cast
The bottom line is that Marvel sold out the characters of Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Iron Fist & Luke Cage and everyone on the TV series shown on Netflix on the blatant assumption that Marvel Studios was too big to enter the TV series business and that these characters were irrelevant to the current plot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Even though Netflix did a pretty good job of portraying these characters they are no longer being considered by Marvel Studios as characters to the main Marvel narrative. Even though Marvel might claim them to be a part of the narrative there is no imminent hint of these characters being included in the storyline. Only if Marvel knew of how series shows will become a hit after 2019, they could have kept these stories hold and launched them running parallel to the main story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Spider-Man
Marvel Studios had to pull quite a few strings to get this brand on the road, which included dealing with licensing rights and multiple negotiations with Sony and where the story was at a time when all this was going down and still managed to nail his introduction in the Civil War sequel. Even though it was a supporting role, Marvel Studios showed Spider-Man as a young boy who was still new to his powers and was just being the neighbor-friendly vigilante being thrown into the deep end of a much larger picture.
Marvel Studios would have wanted Spider-Man at the front and end of the Marvel storyline as he could have been the most profitable franchise in the Marvel Cinematic Universe along with Iron Man, Captain America & Thor. Even though at present it all worked out for the best (except Sony) for the Spider-Man story within Marvel. We bet that if Marvel would have been given a chance, they would have gone back in time and taken their story ahead with Spider-Man in the loop of the whole Marvel narrative.
Black Widow
Natasha Romanoff was a head-scratcher for the writers of the Marvel storyline, she was supposed to be an on and off character who would occasionally turn up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to oomph up the star quotient of the movie at major climax sequences. Natasha in the Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline became the warm light that all the avengers wanted to be around and often confide in the shrinking figure Romanoff had to offer. The influence of Scarlett Johansson playing the role of Black Widow was so influential that fans started demanding a film completely dedicated to the role of the Black Widow.
The implication of a completely separate film was quite of a brainer for the writers as the Black widow was only supposed to be cameo appearances, but after her death in the endgame it allowed the writers to script a story around the character of the Black Widow and implicate an origin story of the most popular spy in the Marvel Universe.
Adam Warlock
The god human made his controversial debut in the post-credit scenes of the Guardians of Galaxy 2, where the high priestess promises to avenge the betrayal of her people by announcing her creation as strong enough to crush the Guardians and naming him Adam.
Even though James Gunn has returned, post-pandemic Guardians of the Galaxy 3 has been postponed to Phase 5 of the release. If Marvel knew about the impending pandemic, they might just have included him in any of the other series after Guardians of the Galaxy 2 or may not have done it at all.
Quicksilver
Now this one was something that was earlier not taken in good faith and seemed to be ruthless for tearing up the Maximoff’s twins even after they had suffered so much. But after the news of the WandaVision arc being released in Disney+, fans understood the reason what Marvel Studios did it with Pietro Maximoff and why they did it. Quicksilver’s demise in the Age of the Ultron movie paved the way for the WandaVision arc and gave the Marvel writers the story background they needed to connect the dots for the WandaVision narrative.
Compared to the X-Men’s version of Quicksilver and Marvel’s version of Quicksilver, Marvel could have given Aaron a lot more to do in the Avengers, even though his story was kind of short-lived we are expecting Aaron to make a comeback in the WandaVision arc.
Mandarin
Probably the greatest disappointments of the Iron Man trilogy which saw the Mandarin, the all so ever omnipotent threat, and Tony Starks arch-rival in the Marvel comics. In Iron Man 3 it seemed they were just making movies for fun as compared to the comic where Mandarin is showcased as a being with the ability to harness his Chi into superhuman abilities to be able to survive without food and water for years at a time, along with superhuman strength, powerful martial arts strikes and the 10 rings in his ten fingers granting him different power from the other. Instead, Mandarin is shown as a drunk actor from England who was given the face of a terrorist threatening world peace hired by Aldrich Killian in an attempt to take over the US government and destroy Tony Stark in the process.
After the disappointing marketing of one of the badass supervillain in the Iron Man story arc, we would have wished that Marvel studios could have just kept Mandarin on hold until they knew how to bring him in the picture.
Hulk
Frankly speaking, this is one sore stub toe Marvel is still reeling from. Even though the latter movie has no relevance in the MCU it is still one of the lowest-grossing movies in the history of the Hulk legacy. If only the directors of Hulk knew what MCU was planning all along with Mark Ruffalo, things would have been a lot more different.
Thanos
We were first given a glimpse of the mad titan in the post-credit scenes of the 2021 Avengers, with the camera spanning in on the side of the titan’s face wearing a helmet looked kind of cheap and not at all impressive looking at his reputation in the MCU. We kept wondering as to why the scene was not reshot with James Brolin, looking at his close to a perfect depiction of the mad titan and the way he brought the character alive in the infinity saga.
