The Avengers was a movie unlike any other when it was released in 2012, and nobody could really believe that Marvel Studios had pulled off the impossible and brought a number of different superhero franchises together for one epic adventure. In the mid-credits scene, things took a very unexpected turn when it was revealed that Loki had been working for Thanos the entire time!
Played by actor Daimon Poitier, the Mad Titan was brought to life with practical effects, and while it's unclear whether that was always the original plan for how the villain would be portrayed on screen, by the time
Guardians of the Galaxy rolled around in 2014, he had been replaced by a CGI Josh Brolin.
Now, some newly surfaced behind the scenes photos courtesy of Ironhead Studios have been revealed showing the sheer amount of work that went into creating a practical version of Thanos. With some CGI enhancements, this could have worked on screen, and it's easy to see why Joss Whedon wanted to go down this route given his history with the likes of
Buffy The Vampire Slayer and
Firefly.
Honestly, though, it's hard to fault the amazing CGI version of Thanos we got - but it's difficult not to wonder what might have been at the same time.
To check out these images, all you guys have to do is click on the "View List" button below to check out the entire gallery!
Thanos sits atop his throne in this shot and it's amazing to see just how different be looked only two years later. We may never know the story behind his overhaul, but it could be that this mid-credits scene was shot too late for a CGI version to be designed and created.
Poitier definitely looks the part with those prosthetics and it would have been a lot of fun seeing how a practical version of Thanos would have interacted with Earth's Mightiest Heroes. He certainly would have been smaller in stature, though, and perhaps not quite as powerful.
The level of detail here is phenomenal and this could have worked well on screen. Ultimately, though, Marvel Studios probably wanted a bigger name to fill the role, and it's now impossible to imagine anyone other than Josh Brolin bringing the iconic bad guy to life.
Continue reading below to check out some recently revealed Avengers: Endgame concept art!
Here, we see Iron Man and Black Widow travelling back in time and, as you can see, it appears as if they were going to be "dusted" in a similar way to those who died in
Avengers: Infinity War.
It's a pretty chilling effect but one that would have effectively shown how the heroes were basically broken down to their molecules before arriving wherever they were meant to go in the past.
This is a very different time-travel machine to the one we saw in the movie itself and much smaller. As a result, it would have taken an awful lot of trips for the team to go back and forth in time!
More dusting effects, this wouldn't not have been a bad take on the time-travel machine but an argument could definitely be made that the one we ended up getting looked just a little bit cooler.
This scene didn't make it into the final cut but was featured in the trailers. Apparently, it was meant to show Black Widow training while living in The Avengers Compound but wasn't needed.
This is the hangar in The Avengers Compound and obviously a lot more expansive than the version that ended up in the movie. It would have been cool seeing all those different vehicles, though!
These designs show Clint Barton/Ronin in Japan and offer some insights into how the setting of his first appearance in
Avengers: Endgame was dreamed up. The use of neon is very eye-catching.
It seems as if we were once going to head even further back in time in New York City. It's hard to say why Earth's Mightiest Heroes would have travelled there but this would have been fun to see.
This is obviously Fort Leigh, the location Steve Rogers and Tony Stark travel to in order to track down the Tesseract. Little did they know that they would cross paths with Howard Stark here!
Scott Lang finds himself back in the present day and the world has obviously changed in the short amount of time he was in the Quantum Realm. More imagery like this would have been great.
If only has was that cheap these days, eh? These shots were no doubt used to establish what the periods the team would travel back in time to would look like and are all both really well put together.
Tony Stark's apartment can now be rented out for a crazy sum on Airbnb, while these images of the monuments erected for those who had died are obviously very striking and extremely haunting.
Many thanks to Sean Hargreaves for the artwork used in this post. See more from him here!