10 Movie Scenes Too Crazy For Cinema

An early draft script of Iron Man from 2004 shows that it was originally more opposed to the weapons industry than the version that made it into cinemas in 2008. However, the US military worked on the script, leading to a series of changes and a full-on public argument about a jokey reference to veteran suicide.

In the earlier script, Tony Stark’s father, Howard, is still alive, and it is he who runs a massive weapons manufacturing business. When others suggest that Tony adapt his inventions into weapons he rejects this, repeatedly saying ‘No military contracts.’ When Tony discovers that Howard has been stealing his designs, weaponising them, and selling them under the table to North Korea and other rogue states, he fights back against the US-led military industrial complex.

Several years later, with the script still not locked down, the tone of the story was changed from being critical of the military industrial complex as a whole, to being a pro-military blockbuster with very limited criticism of a few bad eggs in the arms industry.

Pentagon Hollywood liaison officer Phil Strub recalled an argument over one line where a military character says to another that people would ‘kill themselves for the opportunities he has.’ Strub did not like this line and wanted it to be changed, but the director refused. The argument was still running months later when it came to filming the scene.

Strub recalled, ‘Now we’re on the flight lines at Edwards Air Force Base (California), and there’s 200 people, and [the director] and I are having an argument about this. He’s getting redder and redder in the face and I’m getting just as annoyed. It was pretty awkward and then he said, angrily, “Well how about they’d walk over hot coals?” I said “fine.”