10 Hidden Movies Secrets From Director's Commentaries
8. The Jet From True Lies Was Smashed By The Hulk
Joss Whedon's director's commentary for The Avengers is basically a two-and-a-half-hour nerdgasm. It's crammed with set secrets, insights and anecdotes, including this piece of trivia revealing an unlikely connection to True Lies.
Remember that fighter plane The Hulk smashed to pieces after Thor hurled him into it? That was in fact a full scale fiberglass replica of a Harrier Jump Jet, which was originally built for the aforementioned Arnie movie.
In True Lies, Schwarzenegger pilots the jet near the rooftop of a Miami highrise while fighting bad guys and saving his daughter. The prop was left gathering sand in the desert until Whedon snapped it up for Avengers.
This is one of many pieces of great trivia on offer in the Avengers director's commentary, which also taught us the opening scene in which the Tesseract was being held by SHIELD was filmed at an actual NASA installation.