IRON MAN 3: Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) Was Supposed To Die!

IRON MAN 3: Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) Was Supposed To Die!

Scoop! I just came across some intriguing Iron Man 3 storyboards that were created by storyboard artist, Dan Sweetman. They include an alternate version of Happy Hogan's confrontation with Savin, in which Happy (Jon Favreau) would've died.

By nailbiter111 - Oct 16, 2014 03:10 AM EST
Filed Under: Iron Man 3
Source: Dan Sweetman
After Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) meets Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) at Stark Industries, Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), who is the Head of Security, decides to follow Killian's "Shifty" bodyguard/henchman Savin (James Badge Dale). This leads Happy to the Chinese theater in Los Angeles, where he witnesses Savin delivering a batch of Extremis medicine in a briefcase to Jack Taggart (Ashley Hamilton). When Savin walks away Happy intentionally bumps Taggart, knocking the briefcase to the ground and it opens. Happy pockets one of the metal objects from the briefcase as he helps Taggart collect the contents that spilled out. When Happy begins to walk away with his prize he is quickly confronted by Savin. Happy punches Savin right in the kisser but Savin is unfazed by the blow. Savin's face glows red, which catches Happy by surprise. Savin then grabs Happy's arm and tosses. At this point Taggart begins to glow bright red and screams to Savin for help. Happy and Savin realize something bad is about to happen and duck for cover just as Taggart explodes. In the film, the explosion causes Happy to end up in a coma, but in these Iron Man 3 storyboards below, you can see that the original plan was to have Happy die.

Do you think going with a coma was a better decision than killing Happy off? I wonder how much more powerful the following scene with a distraught Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) issuing a televised threat to the Mandarin would've been if Happy was dead. Instead Marvel and director Shane Black chose the safe route and had Happy wake up from his coma so that he could watch Downton Abbey.

Marvel Studios’ “Iron Man 3″ pits brash-but-brilliant industrialist Tony Stark/Iron Man against an enemy whose reach knows no bounds. When Stark finds his personal world destroyed at his enemy’s hands, he embarks on a harrowing quest to find those responsible. This journey, at every turn, will test his mettle. With his back against the wall, Stark is left to survive by his own devices, relying on his ingenuity and instincts to protect those closest to him. As he fights his way back, Stark discovers the answer to the question that has secretly haunted him: does the man make the suit or does the suit make the man?

Iron Man 3 was directed by Shane Black, from a screenplay written by Drew Pearce. The film opened in theaters May 3, 2013. It stars: Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark), Gwyneth Paltrow (Virginia Potts), Don Cheadle (Col. James Rhodes), and Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin.
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ekrolo2
ekrolo2 - 10/16/2014, 3:39 AM
Would've somewhat redeemed the movie in my eyes, not as much as the thing being cancelled and never coming out but still, an improvement nonetheless.
SuperCat
SuperCat - 10/16/2014, 3:44 AM
"Iron Man 3" is in the headline. Smells like FLAME WAR THURSDAY!!!!

ekrolo2
ekrolo2 - 10/16/2014, 3:48 AM
@dethpillow

Doesn't take being a "DC cat" to recognize a good Marvel movie like DOFP or Winter Soldier from the shit ones like Iron Man 3 and Thor 2.
BatmanIsBaddest
BatmanIsBaddest - 10/16/2014, 3:51 AM
@ekrolo2
Oh, the movie came out and made sh*tloads of money and was championed by all the critics... It really is a shame.

staypuffed
staypuffed - 10/16/2014, 3:53 AM
Iron Man 3 was great. Don't know if Happy dying would've added anything, but it might've.
Darktower
Darktower - 10/16/2014, 3:57 AM
if he die or not i dont care.. this movie sucked so bad in many level..
ekrolo2
ekrolo2 - 10/16/2014, 3:57 AM
@BatmanIsBaddest

Oh so box office gross is what determines a good movie now? I guess Transformers 4 is better then Gotg, Winter Soldier, Days of Future Past, Gone Girl, 22 Jump Street, How to Train Your Dragon 2 because it made more money then them? Piss off.

The only thing that Iron Shit 3 championed was the fact that these guys cannot make a good Iron Man sequel ever. If IM1 which had next to no script during filming and had a lot less work put into it then its sequels and its STILL leaps and bounds better written then them, it shows just how much ass the sequels suck.
breakUbatman
breakUbatman - 10/16/2014, 4:02 AM

IM3 was an attempt at having your cake and eating it.

What was the point of turning Killian into Malen then turning that character into the Mandarin only to not have him be the Mandarin?

Loved those little "See Mandarin was in the movie - no shirt plus tattoos" articles.
BatmanIsBaddest
BatmanIsBaddest - 10/16/2014, 4:05 AM
@ekrolo2
I was responding to this horse manure:
"Would've somewhat redeemed the movie in my eyes, not as much as the thing being cancelled and never coming out but still, an improvement nonetheless."

The film was fantastic. If you have any legitimate criticisms of it, I'd be happy to tear you a new one...
silverdog
silverdog - 10/16/2014, 4:05 AM
"Nobody dies in the cute and fluffy MCU. Everybody knows that."

funny.... I dont see frigga,ronan, alexander pierce, jasper sitwell, victoria hand, koran, malekith, kurse, iron monger, meredith quill, whiplash, laufrey, maya hansen, or aldrich killian (just to name a few), coming back to life.

oh well, at least they dont "die" just to stick around anyway as a lazy plot device like jor-el, the magic holographic fairy.
BatmanIsBaddest
BatmanIsBaddest - 10/16/2014, 4:06 AM
@DIAMONDZ
Yeah. Why do you think it was bad? Are you from the Bizarro world?
GrilledPopcorn
GrilledPopcorn - 10/16/2014, 4:12 AM
I rather gwyneth paltrow... I mean Pepper die!!
BatmanIsBaddest
BatmanIsBaddest - 10/16/2014, 4:14 AM
@GrilledPopcorn
I think you were right the first time...
RidiculousFanBoyDemands
RidiculousFanBoyDemands - 10/16/2014, 4:16 AM
I wish iron man 3 had more iron man in it. But alas with rdj being the star of the mcu I guess I can expect to see more of him and less of his alter ego going forward. The iron man franchise is the most disappointing of all the mcu franchises. I never thought I'd say that I would rather him not be in the next captain America. Here's hoping the higher ups at Disney come to their senses and scrap Civil war. Cap doesn't need iron man and the mcu certainly doesn't need to resort to cheap gimmicks by making a freaking vs. movie.
RidiculousFanBoyDemands
RidiculousFanBoyDemands - 10/16/2014, 4:19 AM
Use your illusion 1 & 2 suck in comparison to appetite for destruction. In fact that's a perfect analogy. Appetite for destruction like iron was a perfect album start to finish. Like iron man a perfect CBM start to finish. Use your illusion is bloated, And has maybe a handful of redeaming songs. Like iron man 2 and 3 they are bloated and have a handful of good scenes sandwiched in between a bloated mess.
McGee
McGee - 10/16/2014, 4:23 AM
@nailbiter111




gtabreaker
gtabreaker - 10/16/2014, 4:27 AM
Just share it!
ekrolo2
ekrolo2 - 10/16/2014, 4:27 AM
@CaptShipwreck

Good to know for the next time you hate a fan & critic liked movie so we can tell you how irrelevant your butthurt of it is.

@BatmanIsBaddest

Sure, here's a few I have:

1) Tony's whole nervous breakdown after Avengers is a great idea that got executed poorly. All it amounts to is Tony huddling up in his home so we can get a bunch of fanservice Iron Man suits (which he conviniently forgets to use to defend his home) and not much else. Now if Marvel actually had a plan for this guy, then this should've been the movie to deal with his alcoholism, the setup with him coping is the perfect way to do it, Tony who was shown having a drinking problem before and now suddenly not having one even though he's at his lowest point thus far makes no sense.

2) Killian's motivation is beyond juvenile and doesn't make sense with the other movies. Tony doesn't go to meet him on the rooftop, then he considers committing suicide and then devotes his entire life to being the leader of a secret terrorist organization because his fanboy feelings got hurt. Are you [frick]ing serious? No, just no.

There's also the comments they made about the 10 Rings pre-release where apparently the same 10 Rings Killian used was the one who kept Tony in the cave AND helped Whiplash get to America. But that doesn't make sense, Killian said he needed Tony to make Extremis, so unless this was a 10 Rings completely separate from Killian, why would he waste time keeping Tony in a cave instead of getting him to go work on Extremis?

3) Tony suffers absolutely nothing in terms of consequences or character development. Now this is a problem Iron Man 2 had where the universe keeps throwing Tony a bone every time things get bad so he can keep being his same old reckless self without paying for it in some significant way.

Either Happy or Pepper dying would've been a great way for Tony's idiotic behavior to finally bite him in the ass so he stops being the same old reckless asshole he's been since Iron Man 1. It also would've made his whole privatizing of world security in later films more personnel as he would've lost a loved one to terrorist extremists.

4) The stupid choices Tony makes are baffling to say the least. Okay, so he spends months building around 40 Iron Man suits all fully equipped for war, he has a special command capable of releasing them all at a moments notice, and yet not only does he not do this to protect the home he and Pepper live in. He uses the absolute worst equipped armor out of them all as security, WHY?!

Why would he not station his armors outside his home for protection? Its not like those helicopters would've had a snowballs chance in hell of getting to him in that case, and with his old girlfriend showing up they easily could've had the same result with a suicide bomber scenario.

5) Trevor, now the Mandarin twist itself doesn't bother me too much because I think its the only genuinely clever thing in the entire movie, but I really feel its a waste to cast Ben Kingsley in such a role especially since he was great in his scenes prior to the reveal. Its just another waste of a good actor on a blegh role.

6) The kid was completely unnecessary, Tony being completely on his own and having to figure things out truly by himself would've fit better with the supposed tone of the movie they were reportedly going for in the pre-release info. Plus the kid curing Tony's schizophrenia by basically telling him "You're Iron Man so stfu" was just an easy way out of a complicated character issue.

7) The humor, oh boy the humor, I hate it. I hate how it keeps on hammering use over the [frick]ing head constantly with absolutely nothing holding it back. Scenes that should be scary or dramatic get turned into absolute jokes, a good MCU movie like Iron Man 1, GotG and WS knew exactly when to have fun and tell jokes, and when that shit had to be sidelined for the plot and characters.

This movie doesn't get that, [frick]ing everything is turned into a joke. Hell Tony seeing Happy in the hospital after he almost dies gets turned into a [frick]ing joke! He tells the nurse he likes Downtown Abbey and we're supposed to laugh at a somber moment?!

Worst of all it tries using as much of it as possible so you don't stop to think about the problems it really has which is the worst crime the humor portion of the film commits.

Now its not an entirely shit movie, the performances are good and some of the action set pieces are okay, but everything else from the character stuff to the tone to the villain all just sucks to the nth degree. It also doesn't help that [frick]ing Avengers 2 and Captain America 3 are giving IRON MAN better stuff to do character wise then a [frick]ing Iron Man movie!
NeoBaggins
NeoBaggins - 10/16/2014, 4:27 AM
Um, the guy talking in the video says "Now most people, that woulda knocked him out". Does this man know that he's watching a MOVIE?
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