4. Maria Hill's Alternate Framing Device (The Avengers)
As it stands, The Avengers has a pretty strong opening. After seeing Loki chattering away with the Chitauri it gets right into the thick of the blockbuster, popcorn-friendly action, with the trickster god popping into a SHIELD facility to pinch the Tesseract, before hotfooting it away with a brainwashed Hawkeye and Erik Selvig, with Nick Fury and Mariah Hill. It's a thrilling action sequence, and a fairly non-traditional opening for a superhero film, involving as it does nobody in tights. They don't turn up until later. There's a Black Widow scene before that, too. Director Joss Whedon didn't want to rock the boat too much, however, which is probably why he decided against including his original opening for the film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLAZtpWOhCE That would've been a very different opening. The deleted scene that could've kicked off The Avengers uses a framing device of Maria Hill being interviewed by the World Security Council after The Battle Of New York, with moody shots of the rubble-strewn city teasing audiences about what was to come. Hill, meanwhile, would be the narrator guiding us through the formation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first super team. It actually works pretty well, but definitely begins the film with a different tone and a slower pace than it probably needed.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
