Why Marvel Had To Hide Some 'Absurd' Iron Man Deleted Scenes
With 2008's "Iron Man," Marvel found its footing in the primordial beginnings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, spawning 15 years (and counting) of interconnected superhero movies. Robert Downey Jr. found new life alongside the studio employing him, perfectly capturing the essence of Tony Stark for fans across the world. But behind the scenes, Kevin Feige and company weren't as confident as their top-billed hero.
According to "Iron Man" producer Jeremy Latcham, who spoke with ScreenRant to promote his latest film, "Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves," Feige insisted that a deleted scene where Tony secretly steals washing machine parts from his kidnappers while pretending to do laundry never see the light of day. Said Latcham, "There are still like three or four deleted scenes from that movie that I don't think will ever be released. Like, ever. Because they were so bad."
Latcham says Feige wanted to bury the laundry scene in particular, claiming it would have humiliated the production. "I remember Kevin saying to me in 2012 ... I was like, 'Should we put the Abu doing laundry deleted scenes out?' and Kevin was like, 'No. We can never put out the Abu doing laundry. People will know we don't know what we're doing. It'll be embarrassing if they see these scenes.' But there was a whole runner in Iron Man where Tony Stark was doing laundry and I don't think they've ever come out."
This many years removed from the release of "Iron Man," with the hindsight to know how unprecedentedly successful the MCU would become, there are surely some fans who would love to see even the worst rejects from the movie that started it all. But that's dirty laundry Marvel would clearly prefer not to air.
The MCU has a lot of unseen deleted scenes
While "Iron Man" producer Jeremy Latcham didn't describe any other unreleased deleted scenes from that film aside from the one of Tony doing laundry, the MCU is littered with bits and pieces that never made it into a theatrical release. Some were the byproducts of rewrites and reshoots, while others were deemed irrelevant, contradictory to the existing canon, or straight-up not good.
For example, as noted by Yahoo! Finance, 45 minutes of Thanos-related content were cut from the finished version of "Avengers: Infinity War." The sequences would have depicted the Mad Titan's conquest of the first Infinity Stone in his gauntlet, the Power Stone he took from the planet Xandar after invading and stealing it from the Nova Corps. That sounds like it would make for a thrilling Disney+ exclusive at the very least, as the theatrical cut of "Infinity War" never gives audiences a satisfying explanation as to why the grape-colored villain arrives with an Infinity Stone already in hand.
Additionally, as collected in Looper's roundup of scenes that never made it into the MCU, a few different instances of references to Spider-Man, mutants, and X-Men were cut over the years. As the MCU is only now beginning to confirm the existence of mutants in-universe, with characters such as Kamala Khan in "Ms. Marvel" and Namor the Submariner in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" being the first to openly use the word mutant.
There have been many scenes removed over the years that would have changed the MCU forever. And while we may never know why Kevin Feige fought so hard to keep those "Iron Man" scenes in the vault, they probably wouldn't have had nearly the same impact as many of the scenes that were removed in later films.