When Avengers: Age Of Ultron was released earlier this year, the reception was far more muted than it had been for its 2012 predecessor, due to the simple reason that it isn't as good. The question, then, is why isn't it? It quickly became apparent in the aftermath that the movie in theatres was not the fully-realised version of Joss Whedon's vision (no android-related pun intended), and that there had been some real creative conflict, with Whedon himself talking about disagreements and unpleasantness. Now the film has made its way onto Blu-Ray, and we can finally see some of scenes that ultimately didn't make the final cut of the movie, on the say-so of either Whedon or the Marvel higher-ups. With the film already running well past the two-and-a-half hour mark the need to trim it down is understandable, but some of these really should've been included, as they help clear up what was at times a rather messy and confusing film.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Quicksilver, who was making his full Marvel debut in Age Of Ultron, was the biggest casualty of the film when shot numerous times towards the end. We may not have seen that coming, but what Joss Whedon did forsee was the possibility of executives not wanting the new addition to be killed off. Although his death was always what the director intended, he has also said he shot a scene of him included as part of the New Avengers at the end of the movie, Another major character who had a scene missing, and thus didn't appear in the film at all, was Tom Hiddleston's Loki. He was initially supposed to appear in Thor's dream sequence, in which there'd be a reference to the fact he has taken over the throne back on Asgard (with Hiddleston doing his best Anthony Hopkins impression). Unfortunately it was cut, due to the fact the film was already so stuffed with characters, but it sounds like a pretty fun sequence. Neither of these scenes have actually made it to the Blu-Ray, so we may never know what they actually look like.