Until very recently, Marvel Studios avoided crossing the line into R-rated territory in its films. That's why most of these scenes never made their way to the screen.
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00:00Until very recently, Marvel Studios avoided crossing the line into R-rated territory in
00:05its films.
00:06That's why most of these scenes never made their way to the screen.
00:10Loki sex scenes.
00:11A topless Gamora.
00:13Tony Stark dropping weapons-grade F-bombs.
00:15There's no way these R-rated scenes were making it into the final cuts of MCU films.
00:21Marvel takes some artistic liberties with the Grandmaster in Thor Ragnarok.
00:24The character's comedy is edgier than most in the MCU.
00:27Perhaps the most not-safe-for-work moment in the movie is when Valkyrie mentions the
00:31Grandmaster uses his spaceship for orgies, actually saying the word rather than hinting
00:35at it.
00:36Did you just say the Grandmaster used it for orgies?
00:39Yeah.
00:40Don't touch anything.
00:42Director Taika Waititi had plans for the Grandmaster to be even cruder.
00:46In fact, in a deleted scene, the Grandmaster has, for lack of a better term, tentacle sex.
00:51As Thor and Bruce Banner ride together in a ship stolen from the Grandmaster's fleet,
00:55it becomes apparent that the Ruler has used this particular vessel before.
00:58A table in the middle of the ship displays holographic videos, and Thor opens one of
01:03the Grandmaster passionately fondling two tentacles.
01:06Even for the Grandmaster, the scene would have been out of place in a PG-13 movie.
01:11Ay-yi-yi!
01:12Seeing all three live-action versions of Spider-Man together in 2021's Spider-Man No Way Home
01:17was a dream come true.
01:19While many of the action sequences with Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire
01:23sharing the screen are thrilling, one of the most special moments comes just before the
01:27final battle.
01:28As the three Peter Parkers wait for the imminent arrival of their foes, they calmly chat about
01:33life, their striking similarities, and their remarkable differences.
01:37While talking, they discover that Tobey's Peter can shoot webs directly from his wrist.
01:42Tom and Andrew's Peters have to fabricate their webs themselves and shoot them from
01:45a device in their suit.
01:47It turns out there was a bit more to this conversation that editors trimmed down for
01:50the initial theatrical release.
01:52When Sony re-released the movie to theaters in September 2022, as the More Fun Stuff edition,
01:58fans got to hear a rather suggestive punchline as part of this exchange.
02:01It just happens, it's… I don't know.
02:05It's so cool, man.
02:06Like I want to see the holes.
02:08While hilarious, the line is definitely more adult than anything else in the movie.
02:13When it comes to crude humor, Marvel seems to give the Guardians of the Galaxy a looser
02:17leash.
02:18Throughout the Guardians films, Peter Quill warns his crew not to look at the inside of
02:21his ship with a blacklight, Drax discusses his nether regions being engorged, and Ego
02:26tells everyone he's, uh, anatomically correct as he explains his godly existence.
02:31Yes, Drax?
02:33I got a penis.
02:34Ha!
02:35Thank you!
02:36This theme continues during the gang's appearance in Avengers Infinity War, when Quill taunts
02:41Thanos about the villain's chin looking like male genitals.
02:44Additional dialogue from Infinity War that was ultimately removed would have kept the
02:48Guardians' thread of crotch-related humor going.
02:51In a deleted scene, Nebula sends the rest of the Guardians an urgent message about Gamora,
02:55with a pretty explicit threat.
02:57Tell Quill not to lose my sister a second time, or I will sew his face to his genitals.
03:04That's her.
03:07Tony Stark isn't exactly the model of a perfect moral compass, especially in his earlier appearances.
03:12That being said, the wild side of Tony's personality mostly comes through subtext, in what filmmakers
03:17imply rather than what they directly show the audience.
03:20One scene deleted from the first Iron Man would have been far from subtle.
03:24In the sequence, Tony throws a party in Dubai, and stops to flirt with two women.
03:28I'm thinking of a number between one and five.
03:32Three?
03:33Exactly.
03:34He walks away with his arms around both of them.
03:37As if that wasn't scandalous enough, they pick up a third girl as they stroll through
03:40a hallway.
03:41Then the camera follows them into the bedroom.
03:44Before things go any further, Tony leaves to get some champagne glasses.
03:47Why don't you guys get started without me?
03:51MCU movies have their fair share of innuendos, but a scene as sexually explicit as this is
03:56far beyond anything that exists in the Marvel film to date.
04:00In a deleted scene from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Ego shows off a memorial he constructed
04:05for Quill.
04:06The statue is supposed to honor the climax of the previous film, in which the entire
04:10Guardians crew saves the planet Xandar together against an attack from Ronin, except some
04:14of the details have been changed to stroke Quill's ego.
04:17Some of the incorrect visuals of the statue play for comedic effect.
04:21Drax is a tiny monkey-like creature on Quill's shoulder, while either Rocket or Groot — it's
04:26difficult to say which — is a shapeless blob behind Quill.
04:30Gamora and Quill's granite likenesses are more sensual than comical, their physical
04:34features manipulated suggestively.
04:36Gamora, kneeling while Quill stands, grabs Quill's hip with one hand and strokes his
04:41inner thigh with the other.
04:42While it's likely the scene was killed for pacing, it isn't a stretch to think that the
04:46fully-rendered statue might have been a bit too much.
04:49Do Marvel superheroes curse?
04:51Which words are okay for them to say and which are off-limits?
04:55Are any heroes averse to swearing altogether?
04:57Shit!
04:59Language!
05:00As writers pioneered the beginnings of the MCU, their scripts had to discover not only
05:04who these characters were, but also define the appropriate level of mature content for
05:08future movies to use as a reference.
05:10In the original version of the opening scene of Iron Man, Tony Stark drops the F-bomb.
05:15In the final version, most of the scene remains, but editors remove the quick moment of swearing.
05:20It's unclear whether screenwriters include the word in the script or if Robert Downey
05:23Jr. improvised it.
05:25In any case, filmmakers must have decided the profanity was too strong, especially as
05:29a first impression of one of the MCU's centermost heroes.
05:33For the record, CNBC notes that a PG-13 movie can technically have one F-bomb.
05:38Any repeated uses bump the rating to an R. Still, Marvel probably wanted to keep its
05:42family audience in mind as it paved the way for the cinematic universe to come.
05:47The Guardians of the Galaxy trailer includes a shot from a scene that's not actually in
05:51the movie.
05:52This tends to be a habit of Marvel, with many MCU trailers showing clips that aren't in
05:56their finished film.
05:57Sometimes this might be by design, perhaps to misdirect the audience and avoid revealing
06:01a spoiler.
06:02Other times, filmmakers might remove a scene during the editing process between the trailer's
06:06release and the film's debut.
06:08The deleted shot in the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer is so risque that it's shocking it
06:12was ever filmed.
06:13The moment in question shows Gamora with her shirt off, her back and a part of her side
06:17exposed as she looks into the camera.
06:20It's possible that the shot was originally part of the scene in which the characters
06:23change into prison uniforms shortly after being arrested.
06:26In the finished sequence as it appears in the film, the camera shows Quill in his underwear
06:30and Rocket fully unclothed, but doesn't show Gamora at all.
06:34The deleted shot remains public on Marvel's YouTube channel as part of the trailer.
06:38Captain America, Black Widow, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, and Vision face off against the Black
06:43Order during an epic fight scene in Edinburgh in Avengers Infinity War.
06:48In the book The Art of Avengers Endgame, designer Phil Saunders shares that the writers planned
06:52on War Machine being in the scene at one point.
06:55In an alternate version of the fight, the Black Order would have sliced War Machine's
06:58suit in half, leading the audience to believe they just saw the hero die before their eyes.
07:03The camera then would have cut to Rhodey remote-piloting the armor unharmed.
07:07Had it remained in the film, the scene could have gotten pretty gruesome, depending on
07:11how violent the fake-out would have been and how long the moment would linger on the apparent
07:15death.
07:17For the most part, the romantic and sexual life of Loki remains off-screen.
07:20The audience only sees Loki develop a love interest with Sylvie in his self-titled series,
07:25Loki.
07:26However, the God of Mischief tells Sylvie he's pursued other relationships in the past,
07:30to which the audience is never privy.
07:32During the development stages of Loki, writers planned to show much more of this side of
07:35the character.
07:37In a photograph, head writer Michael Waldron poses in front of a whiteboard filled with
07:41the team's ideas for the show's first season.
07:43One of the plot points mapped on the board reveals the writers' plans for Loki with a
07:47simple but loaded phrase — doing crazy mischief, a.k.a. sex.
07:52Granted, in the writing stage of a project, anything is possible.
07:55The extent to which the writing team considered these ideas is unknown.
07:59Did they develop the concept of Loki's sexual exploits as full story beats and remove them
08:03much later?
08:04Or did they only jot the ideas down as quick notes on a whiteboard and nothing more?
08:08We may never know.
08:10In Avengers Infinity War, a hammerless Thor embarks on a quest for a new weapon with the
08:15help of Rocket and Groot.
08:16Eventually, the ragtag trio teams up with Eitri to create Stormbreaker from the power
08:21of the star Nidavellir.
08:22The route to wielding Stormbreaker, though, was initially much darker.
08:26The book The Art of Avengers Endgame chronicles abandoned concepts not only for its namesake
08:31film but also for Avengers Infinity War.
08:33Author Eleni Roussos describes an early version of Thor, Rocket, and Groot's adventures together.
08:38In this course of events, Stormbreaker would have been wedged in the skull of the long-deceased
08:42World Serpent.
08:43Rodney Fuentebella, the senior visual development artist, explains there was also an idea of
08:48how after they got Stormbreaker, as they were escaping, the children of the World Serpent
08:52would attack them, and they would have to fight their way out.
08:55Well, there better be some hammer."
08:58Depending on their depiction, that might be above the PG-13 pay grade.
09:02Would they be literal ancestors of the World Serpent, and therefore monsters themselves?
09:06Would they be human children?
09:08Would they be undead?
09:09The answers to these questions would inform the intensity of the scene, but it had the
09:13potential to be terrifyingly mature.
09:17Why did the big J.C. get the axe from the MCU?
09:19The Christian son of God very nearly made his superhero debut in 2022.
09:24In Thor Love and Thunder, Thor and his pals travel to Omnipotent City, the gathering place
09:28for gods and goddesses of all pantheons.
09:31Just about the only major deity missing?
09:33Jesus Christ.
09:34But he was almost in the movie.
09:36In the context of the scene, having Thor meet Jesus would actually make some sense.
09:40Thor and the gang have traveled to ask Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, for help in their
09:44fight against Gor the God Butcher.
09:46The stands are full of figures of worship from all across the universe when they enter
09:50the arena.
09:51We've got Zeus and his fellow Greek gods, who mostly seem intent on lounging.
09:55We've got the god of Korg's people, the Kronan, who is made of rock sitting on a throne of
09:59scissors.
10:00Because rock beats scissors, of course.
10:02We also see the Egyptian and Wakandan cat goddess, Bast, and Quetzalcoatl from the Aztecs.
10:07And that's just the start.
10:08They are the gods of emotions that our heroes disguise themselves as.
10:12There's a creature called Fur God who is sort of a head on fuzzy feet.
10:16We even have Bao, the god of dumplings, and some celestials standing outside peeking through
10:20a window.
10:21So, having Jesus in the scene would have made sense, but would Marvel actually have been
10:24crazy enough to have Thor meet Jesus?
10:27Well, according to Thor Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi, the answer was almost yes.
10:32In an interview with BBC Radio 1 film critic Ali Plum, Waititi was asked if there were
10:37any gods who didn't quite make the cut.
10:39Their director revealed that, in fact, they originally intended to have Jesus Christ make
10:43a cameo.
10:44In the film, Thor's pal Valkyrie even makes a reference to Jesus when she says,
10:48There's the god of magic, the god of dreams, the god of carpentry.
10:54Jesus, of course, is described in the New Testament as being a carpenter, so this line
10:58was clearly a reference to the Christian son of God.
11:00And according to Waititi, they originally planned to show Jesus in the film after that
11:04line of dialogue.
11:05There was supposed to be a cutaway to you-know-who, or Big J.
11:11Waititi doesn't say why the cameo was nixed, but it's not hard to guess.
11:15Let's ponder the social media meltdown if Jesus had been in the MCU.
11:19Twitter would have lost its collective mind.
11:21There would have been endless debates, yelling in all caps, boycotts, think pieces, and memes
11:25galore.
11:26Add in the fact that the deities in the movie are apparently preparing for an orgy, and
11:30madness would have likely ensued.
11:32Of course, it wouldn't have been the first time Jesus Christ appeared in a movie, far
11:35from it.
11:36The son of God in the Christian religion has led his fair share of biblical epics over
11:40the years, and proved himself to be an absolute box office sensation with 2004's Passion
11:44of the Christ.
11:46However, even earnest biblical epics like The Last Temptation of Christ have been subject
11:51to significant protests, and the irreverent tone of Thor, Love and Thunder is very different
11:55from the usual religious sincerity of films involving Jesus.
11:59It shares more in spirit with a film like Monty Python's Life of Brian, which generated
12:03massive outrage in 1979 when a satirical look at the events of the New Testament hit the
12:07big screen.
12:08And that was long before today's 24 hour news cycle.
12:20It's likely someone at Marvel, or it's parent company Disney, decided the quick
12:24gag wasn't worth the controversy.
12:26If you want to see what might happen if Jesus was thrown into a movie or TV show alongside
12:30a bunch of other gods from various pantheons though, it exists in the form of the Star
12:34Series American Gods.
12:36That show actually featured several versions of Jesus Christ, brought into existence by
12:40mankind having several completely different idealized versions of the Christian deity.
12:44One is the profoundly white Jesus, worshipped by middle America.
12:48Another is a Mexican Jesus, who is shot helping migrants cross the border.
12:52American Gods was never a big enough hit to cause outrage, but it's safe to say that Marvel's
12:56Jesus would have gotten a lot more tongue-swagging.
12:59The Deadpool movies are so brazenly crass and violent that Fox even had to make cuts
13:03to avoid NC-17 ratings in some cases.
13:06Here are some scenes that were too wild for the studio.
13:09At a 2016 fan event in Los Angeles, covered by ComicBook.com, Deadpool director Tim Miller
13:14revealed that Ryan Reynolds went a little overboard while improvising a scene with co-star
13:17T.J. Miller.
13:18During the scene when Miller's character riffs on how ugly Deadpool looks after his experiments,
13:23Reynolds admitted that their jokes became really dark and hateful really quickly.
13:26Tim Miller said of the exchange,
13:27"...there was a bar scene that was too vulgar for even the R-rated Deadpool.
13:31That bar scene was particularly mean and offensive to a lot of people, because T.J.
13:34and Ryan got together and wrote a version of the scene that we just said, oh my God,
13:38this is too far."
13:39He continued,
13:40"...I mean, there were so many people offended.
13:41It would have really been, we couldn't do it.
13:43It was just mean, and so I said, no, we don't have to do that."
13:47T.J. Miller also acknowledged that some of his jokes went too far, and that he was relieved
13:50that some of the gags got cut.
13:52Some of the deleted gags made their way onto the Deadpool DVD's special features, but most
13:56remained on the cutting room floor.
13:58The Deadpool films are known for pushing the boundaries of their R-ratings with the
14:01violence.
14:02There was a scene in the original film, however, that was simply too much to include in the
14:05final cut.
14:06As producer Simon Kinberg revealed in an interview with the Express, a cut scene early in the
14:10film features Deadpool desperately looking for a cure for his cancer.
14:14"...Yeah, that's our last stop on our desperation world tour."
14:18He and Vanessa go on what they jokingly, darkly, call the Cancer World Tour to try to find
14:23a cure for it, and they end up in sort of their darkest moment in the s----y clinic
14:26in Guadalajara with a doctor who is a charlatan.
14:29He continued,
14:30"...Wade realizes that and ends up in a very brutal and dramatic and cool way killing him.
14:34And he and Vanessa split up in that moment of Wade realizing that he is in some ways
14:37a monster who can't be with this woman."
14:39Screenwriter Rhett Reese acknowledged that gruesome Guadalajara scene was just a bridge
14:43too far.
14:44"...Once you see enough desperate people ripped off, you start to feel the itch."
14:50One of Deadpool's superpowers is that he cannot die.
14:53Even if he loses a limb or gets ripped in half, he's healed up and whole again in no
14:56time.
14:57This allowed the Deadpool and Deadpool 2 filmmakers to abuse and mutilate their hero to their
15:01heart's content.
15:02In the same interview, the actors thought the whole point of a Deadpool movie was to
15:05be violent, but the filmmakers elected to scale it back a little bit.
15:08Skryne said,
15:09"...I do the suplex and stuff.
15:10I come in and start breaking him down, and they took out quite a lot of beats because
15:14it was just horrific.
15:15Literally, I'm breaking wrists, shoulders, jaws, and it was pretty hardcore.
15:19It did make me laugh that they chose not to put that in, because they thought it was too
15:22far.
15:23And I thought, how can you go too far in a movie like Deadpool?"
15:25There was also a montage of self-slaughter in Deadpool 2 that was likely cut for reasons
15:29of good taste.
15:30When Deadpool experiences a personal tragedy, he attempts to take his own life several times,
15:35only to be resurrected each time.
15:37The suicide montage was included in the Deadpool 2 super-duper cut.
15:40In another deleted scene, the ending of Deadpool 2 sees Deadpool time travel back to 1889 Austria,
15:45where baby Adolf Hitler has just been born.
15:48Deadpool stands over baby Adolf's cradle, working up the courage to kill him.
15:51The scene ends with Wade making a dark decision.
15:53"...maximum effort."
15:55That wasn't the only version of the scene that didn't make the theatrical cut.
15:58In an alternate take, Deadpool hoists baby Hitler out of the cradle, and posits that
16:02maybe Adolf Hitler could be treated well and taught tolerance.
16:06"...a decapitated corpse returning from the dead to destroy his own allies.
16:11It can only be the work of the Scarlet Witch.
16:13But was this deleted scene a step too far for Marvel?
16:16We've always known that Scarlet Witch is one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel
16:20Cinematic Universe.
16:21Ever since she first debuted her twitchy hand magic and red-tinted psychic abilities,
16:26it was clear that few heroes would stand a chance against her.
16:29In fact, the entire Avengers crew were turned nearly inside-out thanks to Wanda's efforts
16:33in Age of Ultron.
16:35And it's a lucky thing for them that, by the end of the movie, she has abandoned Hydra
16:38to join forces with the heroes.
16:40Wanda's time as a hero spanned five movies, before a seismic change turned her story upside
16:45down.
16:46The end of the Infinity Saga, told across Infinity War and Endgame, affected Scarlet
16:51Witch maybe more than anybody else.
16:53After the loss of her lover, Vision, Wanda retreats into herself to grapple with the
16:57grief.
16:58From her pain, we got WandaVision, the nine-episode miniseries in which she psychically enslaves
17:02a town of people to live out a blissful sitcom utopia.
17:06This is chaos magic, Wanda, and that makes you the Scarlet Witch."
17:15After realizing that her illusion has come at the expense of the Westview citizens, Wanda
17:19decides to do the right thing and tear it all down.
17:22But that's certainly not the end of her descent into villainy.
17:25In Wanda's most recent MCU appearance, she goes even further, embarking on a full-blown
17:29murderous rampage that threatens to bring down the entire multiverse.
17:33In Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda Maximoff is anything but a hero.
17:37Having left her days as an Avenger behind her, she battles Stephen Strange in an attempt
17:41to reunite with her alternate universe children by any means necessary.
17:46It's mostly thanks to Wanda that the second Strange movie becomes an ultra-violent horror
17:49romp.
17:50It's fair to say that children in the audience probably weren't expecting to see the former
17:54hero portrayed quite like this, but nightmares be damned, Wanda makes a pretty fun villain.
17:59Once she begins her warpath, Multiverse of Madness starts to play out like a slasher
18:03movie, with Wanda wielding chaos magic in lieu of a kitchen knife.
18:07During the events of the movie, Wanda's powers easily eclipse those of her opponent, Doctor
18:11Strange, and his allies.
18:13With the Darkhold amplifying her abilities, Wanda is able to storm Carmartage, defeat
18:18the many other sorcerers who oppose her, and take down the Illuminati of Earth-838 all
18:22on her own.
18:24And her powers are just one piece of the puzzle.
18:26It's Wanda's hell-bent determination that makes her so terrifying.
18:29And if you found it hard to watch the PG-13 movie that ultimately hit theaters, just imagine
18:34the horrors that were left on the cutting room floor.
18:36What's about to happen?
18:40This is me beating Reasonable."
18:45Luckily there's no need to imagine it, as we now have a pretty good sense of what might
18:49have been.
18:50Multiverse of Madness fight coordinator Liang Yang recently revealed that Wanda was meant
18:54to wreak even more havoc in an extended version of her attack on Carmartage.
18:58Shared on Instagram, the test sequence plays out in a long take that sees Wanda decimating
19:03the warriors on the ground, taking them all out with ease.
19:06While this marks an unexpected turn for Wanda and the MCU, it's very on-brand for the film's
19:11mastermind Sam Raimi.
19:13This is the director who helmed titles like The Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, and Drag
19:16Me to Hell.
19:18The gory details of Wanda's rampage are a given for Raimi, but unprecedented for Marvel.
19:23Even when a supervillain like Thanos wiped out half the universe's population, it was
19:27somber and bloodless, as the Mad Titan simply turned his many victims to dust.
19:32Wanda is about as far from that as you can possibly get.
19:35In a cinematic universe that has yet to delve into R-rated territory, it makes sense that
19:39the Scarlet Witch's more gruesome moments would be cut from the film.
19:43But it's still nice to know what could have been.
19:45If they had fully handed Raimi the reins on this one, the movie may have fully embraced
19:49the brutality of the Scarlet Witch, and the terrifying implications of her powers.