TAC1

26 movies. At the time of writing this, the MCU is the largest movie saga ever created. This isn’t even counting the dozens of seasons of TV shows that accompany this story. In this 26 movie monstrosity, we are gifted some of the most incredible moments to ever grace theaters, and on the flip side there have been some absolute stinkers. As a more casual Marvel fan who has drudged through almost every piece of content released, I would say AS A WHOLE I actually wouldn’t remember the MCU as fondly as I’d like due to the sheer amount of nonsense you have to experience along the way. My feelings towards Marvel are diluted by the many distractions from the main story. There is a ridiculous amount of content akin to the “monster of the week” TV trope of shows dragging on seasons and seasons past where the story should’ve ended. However, at the heart of this Infinity Saga, there is a truly one of a kind story about the Avengers vs Thanos. To me, most of the other side movies with random one off villains are largely a waste. I’m not saying they are bad movies, but many of them are looked at as cash grabs with no impact on the overall themes of the Infinity War aside from an easter egg or two. And some (Hulk, Iron Man Sequels etc.) have virtually no noticeable difference on the main story if you choose to not watch them. I’m here to refocus and streamline what makes the MCU special.

The Avengers was the 6th movie in the MCU, but the first to unite things into a cohesive narrative and so my story begins there. Personally, I am only interested in telling the best Marvel story possible rather than going into every origin story of characters we are all by now familiar with.

I fully credit FireMerkStudios for his Dawn of Thanos idea, and I openly cite some of his content as my source. He has attempted to do exactly what I am working on here, though he cut out MUCH more than I did. Whereas he aimed to do a series of short chapters, mine will be 6 full length movies in a Star Wars saga-esque presentation. In my Dawn of Thanos re-edit, I will be combining ALL Marvel content into one, refocused narrative about the Avengers vs Thanos.

Changelog:

My story begins largely with The Avengers film, but with an extended/alternate opening, and some major narrative changes throughout.

Hawkeye’s origin story is completely reimagined. No longer is he an ex-SHIELD agent mind controlled by Loki, he is merely a mercenary for hire to begin. After losing to the Avengers at the midway point of the film, he will voluntarily choose to betray and fight against Loki. His entire backstory with Natasha is removed.
Bolstered by scenes of Nick Fury founding the Avengers in Captain Marvel, and Iron Man 1, the opening of the film is completely reworked to not include anything with the Tesseract… speaking of…
The Tesseract is no longer in the film. (aside from an easter egg reference that has 0 impact on the main story) This movie does not change one bit if you cut out every single reference to “the cube”. I kid you not, having the entire narrative focused solely on Loki and not this device greatly reduces the distractions and we can nail the plot points so much more clearly without it.
As there is no Tesseract, Hawkeye mind control, there is also no mind controlled scientist needing Iridium to open the portal etc. The portal has nothing at all to do with the Tesseract anymore.
Back to the opening of the movie, we see Fury’s initial idea for the “Protectors”, him recruit Stark, roll Marvel intro, then we cut to Firemerk’s scene of Thanos capturing Gamora as a child to present our main villain and threat of the MCU.
After Thanos, we cut to Captain America waking up from the end of First Avenger. After Fury tells him what’s up (we now have seen Fury recruit Stark and Rogers), we transition to Fury talking to the council about the looming Loki threat and Fury’s Avenger idea. Fury says “We need soldiers” and we cut to the Iron Man 1 scene of him fighting the terrorists. This is to continue showing that Tony has been the under the employ of Fury before anyone else, and while there isn’t currently an Avenger program, he still is fighting around the world to keep the peace by himself.
As Iron Man flies out of the middle east we cut to the deleted scene of Steve adjusting to the new era. After he talks to the waitress, he takes a motorcycle out to a museum (from Winter Soldier) to catch up on history and continue processing what has happened to Peggy. To deal with the pain, he goes to the VA meeting and meets Falcon for the first time. The scenes are reorganized so that after Falcon asks him, “What makes you happy?” we cut to the scene of Steve running laps around him.
After this, we now cut back to the Avengers scene of Iron Man flying to Stark tower, but instead of it being from him fixing some clean energy underwater he is now flying back from the middle east as I showed earlier. This scene continues to play out, but I have cut out mentions of Tony previously not being allowed in the Avengers and mentions of the Tesseract. This is now just Coulson getting Tony back on track with the main mission.
We now cut to a trimmed intro of Black Widow and then her subsequent recruitment of Bruce editing anything for consistency with my main idea.
After Bruce is confronted, we cut to Steve boxing and continuing to process his trauma before Fury comes in and officially recruits him as well. Again, no Tesseract. This is all general recruitment to be an Avenger.
Cut to a trimmed version of Loki talking to The Other about the incoming invasion. This is now the first we have seen of Loki in the film as we only saw Thanos earlier. So now when The Other is making the easter egg references to Thanos it is much more relatable.
After the conversation, we cut to Steve landing on the Avenger base and meeting Bruce.
On the Avenger base, there’s no Tesseract talk, no doctor/Hawkeye controlled. All about Loki.
There’s another 50 or so edits in here, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been said already. I am greatly focusing the narrative by adjusting every scene to no longer be about the Tesseract/mind controlled people and 100% about Loki alone. The rest of the Avengers film plays out with this major change in place, so rather than repeating myself 50 more times I’ll just say you should watch it!
I have also removed a few of the more obvious humor attempts that I felt were way over the top, and also note that as it is a Dawn of Thanos re-edit this movie would be rated R. There is increased profanity through subtitles of foreign languages and such.
The film still clocks in at 2 hours 8 minutes without credits, so this remains a full movie.

I would love to hear some thoughts from those of you who are at different fan levels of Marvel content. As I mentioned, I am not personally married to Marvel in any way and am solely interested in telling a great story, so I apologize if any of these changes are offensive to more of the deeper Marvel connections that maybe I don’t understand. But this is a retelling of the story and I ask that you give it a chance.

This workprint is released, but I have abandoned this project as a whole and will not be updating this film any further or creating any other projects relating to Marvel.