Earlier today, artist Mushk Rizvi uploaded concept art for several past and upcoming MCU projects to her website...including Avengers: Doomsday. It was a pretty major blunder, albeit one that's unlikely to do any harm to the movie. If anything, it will just increase excitement.
Regardless, Rizvi also shared some of her work on Captain America: Brave New World, showcasing the superpowered Serpent Society.
Original plans called for this team to battle Cap, The Falcon, and possibly even Isaiah Bradley during the movie's opening. Rumour has it the previous iteration of The Leader - think more mastermind and less victim - enhanced the villains who were a crucial part of his plan to steal Adamantium and cause a global crisis.
There are several alternate designs here and, based on set photos, Marvel Studios initially went for those full-blown supervillain costumes. The one thing this lot has in common are cybernetic enhancements in their arms giving Diamondback, Cobra, Mamba, Constrictor, and more some pretty hardcore powers.
Rosa Salazar and Seth Rollins were cast as Diamondback and Cobra but both ended up being cut, even with the former getting her own Happy Meal toy last year.
During a recent interview, filmmaker Julius Onha said the movie's reshoots took Captain America: Brave New World from being "heightened" to "more grounded" and cited the Serpent Society being cut as an example.
"I think it gets a little deceptive in ‘a whole new character was added,’ because Serpent Society was always a part of the story, so the story function that Serpent Society serves in the film has never changed...we were deviating probably a bit too much from the grounded tone that we wanted the movie to have with how we had created Serpent Society at first."
"You know, they are people dressed like snakes in comic books, and they have snake-adjacent powers and stuff that’s really, really heightened, and you wanted an actor who could really help us lean, or gesture towards the fantastic, but without losing that sense of grounding. So it’s not like Serpent Society or the character changed. It was just, let’s really introduce a version of them that fits into the tone of the movie."
Take a closer look at what might have been in Captain America: Brave New World in the X posts below.
In Captain America: Brave New World, after meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross, played by Harrison Ford in his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut, Sam Wilson finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red.
The movie stars Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Xosha Roquemore, Carl Lumbly, with Giancarlo Esposito, Liv Tyler, Tim Blake Nelson, and Harrison Ford. The movie is directed by Julius Onah and produced by Kevin Feige and Nate Moore. Louis D’Esposito and Charles Newirth serve as executive producers.
"Flawed but functional, Captain America: Brave New World's many problems are largely forgotten any time Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford electrify the screen," we said in our review. "And when Red Hulk shows up, the movie reaches new heights of awesome."
Captain America: Brave New World is now playing in theaters.