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When I first watched Hawkeye, all I could think was, despite how fun everything was, there was just too much happening. It was a series without focus. In July 2022, I set out to take Hawkeye and transform it into a more streamlined movie format, while maintaining the comedy and Christmasy feel. 4 iterations and 8 months later, here we are.
Whole swaths of the show have been restructured to fit a 2 hour, 8 minute runtime. Establishing Yelena at the beginning, we focus in on three arcs:
- Yelena’s desire for Revenge
- Clint’s guilt from the events of Endgame
- Kate’s journey
To make this work, Echo’s storyline had to be minimized - Kazi barely exists, Clint doesn’t get captured, and (sadly) the bridge chase doesn’t happen. The chase has too many things going on at once, and including it would, unfortunately, cause the edit to become either too long, or incoherent. This also means we lose the hearing aid subplot, which, while really good, eats up a lot of time. The Rolex subplot is dropped. Combined with some heavy restructuring and micro-cuts, this was enough to get things down to a more reasonable length. Keep an ear out for some additional Christmas music!
Some major cuts/changes:
- The movie begins with a cold open on Yelena, while the Avengers flashback is removed entirely.
- The Marvel Fanfare has been swapped out for Holiday-themed one introduced by the GotG Holiday Special.
- The holiday gala has been shortened considerably.
- Clint no longer walks Kate to work.
- Clint asks Natasha for forgiveness directly after sending his kids away, after which we see Yelena stalking Kate’s mom.
- Instead of doing some “Catch and Release,” Clint sends his arrow message to the Tracksuits, retrieves the suit from the LARPers, and then goes to fight Maya at a used car lot, where Kate meets up with him after dinner. This establishes an offscreen familiarity between Clint and Maya that establishes her goals, in an albeit exposition-heavy manner.
- Yelena’s conversation with Kate has been carefully recut to account for the rooftop scene not being present.
- Eleanor’s conversation with Kingpin occurs shortly after the conversation, and before Kate’s Christmas bonding session with Clint.
- Maya doesn’t have her fight with Kazi.
- Eleanor’s character is kept consistent by her silently accepting her arrest, instead of shaming Kate for being responsible for once.
- Close on Kate coming to Clint’s home
Two post-credits sequences:
- Maya shooting Kingpin
- Wendy asking Jack if he’s LARPed, since the scene resembles early MCU “Have you heard of the Avengers Initiative” scenes
Resolution is 1080p, with 5.1 audio, and subs are present.
