I was reading an article on main about an alternate ending to Iron Man 2. In the alternate ending War Machine killed Justine Hammer. That would have been fine because to be honest, Hammer is annoying. In the comments section one of the first comments that I read was that marvel chose not to because it may have been to dark for the "kiddies". This is a common complaint I see on this site regarding Marvels movies. It's a silly complaint and it's just plain wrong.
Ill jump right in with the movie that started Phase 1.... Iron Man. There was no shortage of death and destruction in Iron man. I mean there was a healthy body count, hell during his escape Tony set dudes on fire. The movie ended with Tony killing his mentor, a man that he has known his entire life and one of the few remaining connections to Tony's father. That relationship between Tony and Howard Stark is touched on just enough to let us know that it was strained and there were issues there. None of those are my main examples though. When Tony suites up for his first mission he is returning to the region ware he was originally kidnapped. We are given a news report of what is going on in Gomera. It is nothing short of an ethnic cleansing. If you are unfamiliar with what an ethnic cleansing consists of there are some key words that you can look up in order to get an idea.... Nazi, final solution, Idi Amin, Bosnia, TuTu, Somalia. Those are just a few examples. Now when Iron Man lands in the midst of this we see a man on his knees about to be executed in front of his family, to include his young child. When Iron man is about to engage the aggressors, they are hiding behind women and children and using them as human shields. Iron Man kills them with well aimed missiles to the heads. He then takes the leader of the attackers and throws him to the villagers. Its safe to assume that the villagers showed mercy and didn't tare him apart, set his body on fire, drag him through the streets and hang his body from a bridge. Because nothing like that ever happens in that part of the world. Ya, an ethnic cleansing scene is just full of kid friendly undertones.
Moving on to the Avengers.... Marvels crown jewel (to this point) of kid friendly movie fair. The good Dr. There's a scene on the Heli Carrier ware Loki has manipulated them all into an argument, part of his divide and conquer plan and his intention of activating the Hulk. So during this conversation, in which such kid friendly topics as weapons of mass destruction are bandied about, Dr. Banner tells the team that he cant be killed. That he knows. because he tried. He took a gun, put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. for all intents and purposes he committed suicide. But he failed because the other guy spit it out. Suicide. If that's not a kiddie theme then I don't know what is.
The Phase 1 movies are peppered with these examples. Some are subtle, some are not so subtle. The funny thing is that Marvel never came out and said "We're going for dark. this is a dark movie, with dark themes and dark tones". Therefore, because people weren't told that it was dark and adult, people disregard what is actually being said, what they are actually seeing, and call it kiddie. These movies don't cater to children, and they don't shy away from real content. They just didn't come right out and say "this is DARK!". To be more specific, Nolan (who I like) didn't come out and say "ya, this is dark. This is gritty, this is based in the real world". So the real world themes, the serious issues that are touched on, that are a consistent under current in all of their movies are ignored.