13 Best Comic Book Movie Deleted Scenes You Need To See
7. The Avengers' Interesting But Not As Feel-Good Opening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhV4pIsE5X8Good news - originally, Cobie Smulders had even more screen time in 2012's The Avengers, as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill. Bad news - it got cut!
In the comics, Maria Hill is not only a director of S.H.I.E.L.D. but is involved in some of Marvel Comics' most important storylines in recent years. Quite the achievement for a character only introduced in New Avengers in 2005. As far as the MCU goes, Hill first appeared in The Avengers, but in those early days she wasn't going to be quite the helpful, friendly agent fans know now.
Actually, in the unused opening to The Avengers, Hill is depicted as someone who thinks S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury got things wrong - she's a critic of the fearless, eye patch-wearing Fury. This approach to Hill's character is interesting, and a must-see piece of cinematic history, because it raises the possibility that she was intended as a future replacement to Fury, just as she was in the comics.
As it turned out, the flash-forward opening, with its post-battle gloom, was seen as too depressing and the entire sequence was ditched. In the end, audiences saw a much friendlier Hill, which allowed her character to remain at Fury's side in The Winter Soldier and to help out Tony Stark in the post-S.H.I.E.L.D. world in Age Of Ultron.