Warning: the following contains spoilers for "Captain America: Civil War."
Marvel has brilliantly built their shared cinematic universe around the premise of anticipation. With each new scintillating post-credits scene comes yet another tease of what's to come, another nod toward future events. That strategy is still going strong as May's "Captain America: Civil War" could feature up to three post-credits scenes. But unfortunately, one popular MCU character and one up-and-comer who were supposed to be included in those sequences have been cut.
Leading up to "Civil War," especially around the time of "Avengers: Age of Ultron," fans began wondering if Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner/Incredible Hulk would be making an appearance in the upcoming blockbuster. Some rumors hinted that he could be, while others flat out denied it. Now it turns out that the truth is a little bit of both.
"We can clean that up real quickly," "Civil War" co-writer Christopher Markus said in a recent interview. "Mark Ruffalo shot no scenes. We talked about having Bruce Banner at the very end of the film, and it just, again, seemed like we're sticking people in just to stick them in. He has clearly gone somewhere at the end of Ultron, and that's a story. Don't blow it off and put it in a little tiny chunk just to put in a little extra filigree on our movies. That's a story."
"There was a draft with a stinger of him in it," co-writer Stephen McFeely added. "But that was long ago, and reports of him actually filming stuff - the unit publicist on the movies [John M. Pisani] looks a lot like Ruffalo, so when people say, 'Hey, he's in Berlin dancing with Anthony Mackie,' it's John Pisani. It's not Ruffalo."
Keeping the Hulk sidelined for this film was a matter of selecting characters who will have "maximum impact" this time around. That's the same reason why Evangeline Lily's Wasp didn't make the cut either.
"We certainly had a draft where both Ant-Man and Wasp were recruited, but when they come in, that's a lot of story there, and you can't just let Paul Rudd do what we need him to do in that section, which is look at it from wide open innocent eyes and appreciate the Avengers from the outside, which gets you comic relief beat after beat after beat," McFeely continued. "Spider-Man's similar, right? Because these people have an investment, and these two new people don't. It's not that Wasp wouldn't also have that opinion maybe, but we have not seen her be a hero at all, so that's an example of where we think we'd be drinking someone's milkshake. Let's let the Ant-Man franchise show her come to her full fruition as opposed to just doing it offscreen."
Disappointed fans need not worry about these character's absences, though. The Hulk will be teaming up with the God of Thunder in "Thor: Ragnarok," and the Wasp will obviously be a big part of the "Ant-Man" sequel, "Ant-Man and the Wasp."
