IRON MAN 3 Storyboards Reveal Alternate Death Scene For Ellen Brandt

In Iron Man 3, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) meets with the mother of Chad Davis at a bar in the rural Tenessee town Tony has been laying low in. During this meeting, Ellen Brandt (Stephanie Szostak) shows up, posing as an agent of Homeland Security. When she tries to "arrest" Tony a local Sheriff steps in, but she quickly kills him and his deputies. Tony then quickly leaves the bar and heads to a diner across the street. Brandt soon enters the diner and the two exchange words as they Tony tries to outsmart her. He puts Davis' dog tags into a microwave, turns it on, and then opens a gas valve. This creates a blast that is so powerful it sends Brandt's body flying into power lines. She is dead. Her Extremis healing powers can not overcome the power of power lines.

But in the storyboards below, Brandt and Tony don't begin their skirmish in the bar, nor do they end up in the diner. Their fight begins out in front of the bar. Brandt fires her gun at Tony as he runs for safety. When the gun runs out of bullets she uses her Extremis powers to melt the gun down into a snowball and chucks it at Tony. It misses Tony, but it ends up piercing several cars and hitting a utility pole supporting power lines. The pole topples over and the live power lines land on Brandt. Tony can sense that a large explosion is imminent so he jumps down a nearby hillside to avoid the blast. That blast ends up killing Brandt.

Visit Film Sketchr (click here) to see all of Darren Denlinger's Iron Man 3 storyboards for this sequence, which has a few more variations from the theatrical version.

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. It opened in theaters May 3, 2013. It starred Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark), Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts), Don Cheadle (Col. James Rhodes) and Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin.