Avengers: Infinity War: Captain America And Iron Man Were Supposed To Reunite

It's hardly a secret by now that a fair bit of what fans believed they were supposed to see in Avengers: Infinity War didn't make it to the final cut, or, in the curious case of the missing trailer footage, wasn't even crafted for the theatrical version of the movie in the first place. But there was one extra-special moment originally intended to play out on the big screen that wound up getting completely cut during production. 

Speaking with Yahoo! during a visit to Yahoo Studios, Infinity War screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely shared that they initially wanted Chris Evans' Captain America and Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man to reunite following their emotional breakup in Captain America: Civil War, just before Josh Brolin's Thanos kicked his nefarious plans into overdrive. Unfortunately, the writing duo and co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo realized that the plot point just wasn't jelling well, and thus, they decided against including it. 

"Our first sort of wonky draft [had] the idea that they had to get back in the same room together and deal with that," McFeely said. "[But it] meant that you're slowing down your Thanos [Infinity] Stones [quest] to deal with other threats from other movies. And that became, as much as we wanted to do [it] and as many times as we wrote those scenes, it became clear that this movie needed to be propulsive and be about Thanos and what he represented to the Avengers."

But don't shed any tears just yet, Cap and Iron Man lovers: Markus and McFeely are apparently saving the heroes' reunion for Avengers 4. 

The pair also revealed that there was a version of Avengers: Infinity War in which Tom Holland's Spider-Man didn't join Iron Man and Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange in space; instead, Anthony Mackie's Falcon was, at one time, slated to journey to the cosmos. 

"There was one [version] where Spider-Man did not go to space, and where Falcon went to space," Markus stated. In the finished film, Falcon headed to Wakanda to fight with Captain America, Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther, Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow, and many others. The screenwriter added, "It was fun, it was interesting, it's always great to have those guys in various situations, and there was a lot to do with them in both situations, but we weren't getting as much emotion as we could if we brought them back to people who know them."

While it would have been touching to see Tony Stark and Steve Rogers back together again in Avengers: Infinity War, the fact that they haven't seen each other yet means their eventual homecoming in Avengers 4 will be all the more emotional. And who knows? Maybe Markus and McFeely saved even more of their scrapped story ideas for the fourth Avengers film.