For some fans, watching the deleted scenes or hearing the filmmakers talk about their original vision for a movie can be just as entertaining and informative as watching the movie itself.
Quite often, what was cut out gives you a better idea of what happened behind the scenes than what is in the final polished product. Sometimes it can be frustrating to see a perfectly good scene cut out. However, on the other hand, there are some deleted scenes that would have arguably made their movies actively worse had they been included.
It should be no secret by now that comic books are super weird sometimes. As superhero movie adaptations have literal decades of stories and events to draw from, it would make sense that some of our favorite movies nearly had some truly weird and wonderful additions.
In fact, there were so many scenes worthy of a mention, we had to make a special extended list to accommodate them all.
With that said, here are the 21 Superhero Scenes We Never Got To See.
21. Justice League - The black Superman suit
The deleted scenes that have come out of Justice League tell a fascinating story of what might have been. There are already big hints that the movie was a very different beast before it was reworked by Warner Brothers and Joss Whedon.
However, one of the cut sequences that hurts the most is a brief moment where the recently revived Clark walks past a black version of his suit in the resurrection chamber.
This, of course, is a nod to Superman's reappearance after the Death of Superman story and it suggests a more faithful take on the material than what we ended up getting.
There's a lot of Snyder's signature style in the short clip and the Hans Zimmer Man of Steel theme kicks up the epic feel by a couple of hundred notches, so it's a real pity that we never saw this in theaters. If the mythical Snyder cut is ever released, including this scene would be a no-brainer.
20. Thor: Ragnarok - The exiled All-Father
In the first act of Thor: Ragnarok, Thor finds out that Loki has put Odin under a spell and banished him to Earth to rule in his stead. Later, both Loki and Thor catch up with Odin in Norway, thanks to the help of Stephen Strange.
However, many fans noticed that the scene in which Hela destroys Mjolnir takes place in a Nordic field, not the city streets of New York, as seen in the trailer.
Coupled with set photos of Anthony Hopkins goofing around in New York City, this suggests that the Odin scenes were changed fairly late on in the process. Odin is dressed as a homeless man, presumably the mortal guise that Loki conjured for him.
Director Taika Waititi explained that the scene was too much of a “bummer” seeing Asgard's noble king living on the streets, so it was changed to something more thematically fitting.
19. Iron Man 2 - Teetotal Tony
Iron Man 2 opens with Mickey Rourke's Ivan Vanko putting the finishing touches to his long-gestating revenge against the Starks. Tony, meanwhile, dives out of a plane to the strains of AC/DC and lands on a stage in front of a wildly cheering audience, where he is backed by scantily-clad dancers. Talk about a tonal shift.
However, the alternate opening to Iron Man 2 shows that Tony isn't just a ridiculous egomaniac, but he's suffering too and he's putting on a brave face.
The alternate opening scene starts with Tony drunkenly vomiting and bickering with Pepper in between bouts. Tony seems pretty rattled in his inebriated state (suggesting that he already knows his arc reactor is poisoning him) and even tries to abort the air drop.
Pepper convinces him otherwise and Tony asks for a kiss for good luck. She kisses the mouthpiece of the Iron Man helmet instead and tosses it out the back of the plane, leaving Tony to shout “you complete me!” as he dives after it.
18. Captain America: Civil War - Cap vs. Widow
There's a lot going on in Civil War, with both new and old heroes picking sides and fighting against each other. It should serve as no surprise that there were significant chunks cut out of the final product to make it more streamlined.
One of the more interesting bits of business to hit the cutting room floor was a planned fight between long-term allies Black Widow and Captain America.
The fight took place in amongst the surrounding chaos at the airport. The pair clash on a rooftop and Romanoff soon realizes that Steve isn't going to stop his crusade. They grapple, but Rogers has an answer for everything she throws at him.
Cap checks that she has her gear on before he overpowers her and throws her off a rooftop.
Natasha is forced to use a grappling hook to save her skin, landing on the ground below.
Steve looks down from the rooftop and nods before turning tail and running. It's a great sequence that reinforces Nat's later decision to allow Steve and Bucky to escape, but it was unfortunately cut due to time restraints.
17. The Dark Knight Rises - Bane's training
There are plenty of interesting omissions from The Dark Knight Rises, but one of the most surprising wasn't included in any of the official deleted scenes.
Costume designer Lindy Hemming accidentally let slip that there was a big flashback to Bane's League of Shadows training. She talked about the evolution of Bane's look and detailed several sequences that never made it to the final cut.
Hemming described the training as very similar to Bruce's in Batman Begins and said that there was even a scene that explained where Bane got his signature mask from and why he wears it.
While most critics liked The Dark Knight Rises, Bane was generally considered to be a lesser villain than Batman's previous foes and it seems like a few sequences detailing his connection to Batman could have gone a long way to fleshing the character out more.
16. Doctor Strange - The death of Strange's sister
Director Scott Derrickson is a massive comic fan and it shows in his work. Doctor Strange (2016) is a pretty faithful adaptation of the Sorcerer Supreme's origins, but comic fans will know one missing element – the Strange siblings.
It's understandable why the filmmakers would want to leave out big brother Victor (who died, was frozen, and came back as a vampire). However, it seems odd to leave out the death of Donna Strange, one of the instrumental factors for Stephen wanting to become a doctor in the first place.
This wasn't the original intention, though. Derrickson wanted to include this significant part of Strange's backstory in the movie, but for one reason or another, it just didn't come together.
He gave more details in the press junket leading up to the movie's release: “We shot that scene. I loved that scene, it was a really great scene. It just didn't fit in the movie, it didn't work.”
Despite several sequences featuring Donna apparently being filmed, the deleted scenes have yet to materialize in any form so far.
15. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - Norman Osborn's frozen head
In the years since its release, it's become clear that The Amazing -Man 2 had a rocky production. The fact that several massive plot-altering scenes made it all the way up to filming before they were cut speaks volumes about the conflicting directions the movie was pulling in.
The most famous of these deleted sequences is the surprise reveal that Richard Parker is still alive, but he wasn't the only father coming back from the dead.
In a deleted scene intended to be the post-credits stinger, the mysterious Mr. Fiers walks through the secret Oscorp lab.
Fiers es a bunch of prefabricated Sinister Six suits and enters into a room containing Norman Osborn's cryogenically frozen head in a box.
Fiers says “Time to wake up, old friend” and boom-- cut to black. Whether Chris Cooper was signed on for another film is unknown, but we'd be lying if we said we weren't curious about how much of a role he was originally going to play in the threequel before the scene and the entire series was canned.
14. Justice League - A heart-to-heart with Martha
Justice League's behind the scenes drama gets more and more interesting by the day. We know that Zack Snyder had to step away from the project for tragic personal reasons, leaving Joss Whedon to be hired in his place and try and fill in the gaps.
Many fans didn't respond well to the final product and several are calling for the Zack Snyder cut to be released. Not much is known about how much of the movie Snyder managed to complete, but there seems to be new scenes being revealed with regularity thanks to Zack re-engaging with fans on social media.
For International Women's Day, Snyder dropped a tranquil shot of Lois Lane and Martha sharing a moment of downtime over a hot drink at Lois' apartment, a scene not present in the theatrical version.
The scene looks like it could have been a nice, quiet, and introspective counterbalance to all of the movie's louder action sequences and could have given us a deeper insight into both characters. U
nless Warner Brothers decide to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, we may never know what the two most important ladies in Clark's life were talking about.
13. Avengers: Age of Ultron - A Hulk "fist pump" moment
We actually don't know the specifics of this cut scene, but there's a very good reason for that. When he was scripting Age of Ultron, Joss Whedon ran into a brick wall with an element of the final confrontation in Sokovia.
He described a “great gag” involving the Hulk that would have been an awesome fist pump moment for audiences. Whedon says that they were building the fight around this one scene, but couldn't find a way to justify it.
Joss has been coy with any further details because there's a good chance thatit will show up in future Avengers movies.
He talked with the studio and said, “You can use this in another movie! Hold on to that!” Several hardcore Marvel fans have already theorized what this Hulk moment may be, some believing that it'll appear in Infinity War due to leaked images of the toyline. Time will tell with this one.
12. X-Men - An explosive Gambit cameo
Back in the late '90s and early 2000s, the superhero landscape was a lot different. Blade had managed to become a solid crossover hit and the old guards of the genre and Superman seemed unlikely to return to the big screen any time soon.
Bryan Singer's X-Men became one of the biggest hits of the year in 2000, introducing movie audiences to Professor X's team of mutant marvels.
Nowadays, references and even cameos are practically expected from our superhero entertainment, but the millennium was a very different time.
Singer apparently wanted to add a quick glimpse of Gambit in the movie.
He described a short scene where a young student is seen playing with a basketball which then blows up. He took the scene out because he felt that audiences would be confused and jokily suggested that they would question what was up with the basketballs.
To date, the character's only full live action appearance is in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and we all know how that went. Save us Channing Tatum, you're our only hope.
