THE INCREDIBLE HULK Nearly Had a Much Darker MCU Story With Tony Stark and Captain America

Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe became a massive interconnected machine, Marvel Studios was still figuring out exactly what this whole experiment was going to look like.

Back in 2008, The Incredible Hulk was right there at the beginning, and it turns out the version audiences saw may have only scratched the surface of Marvel's early plans.

Louis Leterrier, who directed the Edward Norton-led Hulk movie and was once in consideration to direct The Avengers, says there's a darker and longer cut of The Incredible Hulk.

Even more interesting, some of the ideas floating around during production involved Tony Stark, Captain America, and story threads that could have changed the shape of the early MCU.

It's especially fascinating considering just how much Marvel Studios had riding on these first movies. When the studio launched the MCU, it had to offer the rights to several Avengers characters as collateral to secure financing. At the time, The Incredible Hulk was viewed as one of the safer bets.

Things didn't exactly play out that way. Iron Man became the breakout hit, earning widespread acclaim and pulling in $585 million worldwide. The Incredible Hulk had a much tougher road. The production dealt with creative issues, reviews were lukewarm, and the movie finished its theatrical run with roughly $264 million worldwide.

While Iron Man became the foundation everyone immediately wanted to build upon, The Incredible Hulk spent years feeling like the MCU movie Marvel didn't quite know what to do with.

But Leterrier's original vision apparently had a lot more going on. Looking back at the 2008 film, the director confirmed that another version exists, and it sounds considerably different from the theatrical release.

"There's a darker cut," Leterrier said. "Longer, obviously. It's not an hour, but it's very interesting because The Incredible Hulk was the first movie sort of starting the MCU. So there were all these ideas that started many of the stories you're following now, and that was in The Incredible Hulk."

That's an intriguing bit of MCU history because Marvel's interconnected universe was still more of an ambitious experiment than an established formula at the time.

The studio was already planting seeds, but nobody knew whether audiences would stick around long enough to watch those seeds grow. Apparently, one of those early ideas involved Steve Rogers.

"It was a little ahead of its time, so we didn't [shoot] it. But Captain America was in it. Tony Stark was in it – he's still in it. And the opening was actually quite interesting. It was set in the North Pole. It was cool. A little too dark. Some got out, some are still to be shown."

Fans familiar with The Incredible Hulk deleted material may remember the scrapped Arctic opening, and yeah, it gets pretty grim.

Bruce Banner travels to the North Pole and attempts to shoot himself. His Hulk transformation prevents his death, with the Green Goliath literally spitting out the bullet. As Hulk tears away from the area, viewers would have briefly seen Captain America's shield trapped beneath the ice.

That Easter egg alone would have been a pretty awesome piece of connective tissue in 2008, three years before audiences officially met Steve Rogers in Captain America: The First Avenger.

What's particularly interesting about Leterrier's new comments, though, is that he appears to be describing something potentially bigger than a blink-and-you'll-miss-it glimpse of Cap's shield. Saying "Captain America was in it" certainly makes it sound like Marvel discussed a more substantial appearance for the character.

Had that happened, it would have been a wild move for the MCU at the time. Marvel would have been teasing or possibly introducing Captain America years before his solo movie, at a point when audiences were only beginning to understand that Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk existed in the same universe.

Those two movies arrived only six weeks apart in 2008, and Marvel was already experimenting with connections between them. Robert Downey Jr. appeared as Tony Stark at the end of The Incredible Hulk, approaching General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross about his Hulk problem.

That scene was originally helping set up a very different road toward The Avengers. Zak Penn had written a version of the team-up movie that would have put Earth's Mightiest Heroes against Hulk, which makes Stark's conversation with Ross feel considerably different when viewed through the lens of those abandoned plans.

Of course, the MCU eventually went another direction, and The Incredible Hulk became something of an oddball entry in Marvel history.

Part of that came from the well-documented creative clashes involving star Edward Norton, who was replaced by Mark Ruffalo when Bruce Banner returned in The Avengers. For years, it seemed as though Marvel was content to acknowledge the 2008 movie without spending much time revisiting it.

That's changed considerably. Captain America: Civil War brought Ross back into the MCU, while Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings revisited Emil Blonsky's Abomination. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law went even further with Hulk-related characters and history, and Captain America: Brave New World pulled more threads from The Incredible Hulk back into the larger Marvel story.

It's funny how a movie that once felt disconnected from everything around it has gradually become increasingly important to the MCU's history.

The possibility of a darker The Incredible Hulk cut makes that history even more interesting. The theatrical movie already had more of a monster-thriller flavor than many later MCU projects, and an opening built around Banner's attempted suicide would have pushed the film into considerably heavier territory.

Then you've got Captain America potentially appearing, Tony Stark connecting Hulk to the larger superhero world, and early ideas for an Avengers-versus-Hulk movie floating around in the background. Marvel clearly had a lot of pieces on the table before deciding how they ultimately fit together.

I'd love to see Leterrier's darker cut eventually pulled out of the Marvel vault, especially if there's material in there that fans still haven't seen. At the very least, it's another interesting look at an alternate version of the MCU that almost happened.

What do you think Captain America's appearance in The Incredible Hulk would have looked like? Was Marvel planning something bigger than the frozen shield Easter egg, and would you want to see the darker cut released?