Avengers: Endgame - 20 Things We Learned From The Director's Commentary

16. Smart Hulk Was Cut Out Of Infinity War At The Last Minute

One of Endgame's most crowd-pleasing reveals is the decision to merge The Hulk and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) into one resolved entity known as Professor Hulk, or as he was called during the shoot, "Smart Hulk."

But McFeely confirms during the commentary that this resolution originally occurred in Infinity War's third act, with Banner and Hulk coming to a compromise, after which Hulk bursts out of the Hulkbuster armour and destroys Cull Obsidian.

It became clear during post-production, however, that "the movie could not handle this weird success", and that "the movie needed to stay in its succession of losses in the third act."

A scene was even shot where Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) attempts her usual "the sun's getting real low" shtick to calm The Hulk down, but he tells her that the technique is no longer necessary.

Ultimately it was decided that the humour of the scene was too jarring compared to the urgent threat of the Infinity Gauntlet situation.

Test audiences meanwhile rejected it as they felt it happened too quickly, requiring a ton of additional last-minute work from the VFX team to rework the sequence.