A deleted version of Nick Fury's big Iron Man speech namechecked mutants and "radioactive bug bites"
Nick Fury’s big theater kid moment at the end of the original Iron Man—we like to imagine him testing out all the various shadows in Tony Stark’s apartment to lurk in, the better to make stepping out of one as dramatic as humanly possible—is one of the defining scenes of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, literally introducing Iron Man into “a wider world” of extremely lucrative superhero nonsense. But it could have been a whole lot wider, apparently, according to footage that MCU air traffic controller Kevin Feige showed off at the Saturn Awards last night.
In the alternate version of the clip—presumably filmed in a spirit of “Hey, pigs can fly sometimes, right?” optimism re: character movie rights—Fury doesn’t restrain himself to simply mentioning “superheroes.” Instead, he gets into specifics, listing mutants and “radioactive bug bites” among his various irritations at present. Fury even gets gifted with a significantly dumber sign-off, responding to Stark’s question about what the Avenger Initiative might be avenging with a growled, slightly sinister “Whatever the hell we want!”
(Here’s the original, less catch-phrase-y version, for comparison.)
Meanwhile, we can only assume Feige showed off the footage to rub salt in the MCU fandom’s collective soul, since, while Disney did finally lock down those sweet, sweet X-Men rights, said acquisition roughly coincided with its loss of access to its favorite radioactive-arachnid-bitten teen. In any case, the clip will be included on the “Infinity Saga” box set that Disney’s putting out later this year.
Note: A previous version of this story included a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that spiders were not bugs, which several people in the comments rightly took exception to. The A.V. Club would like to extend an apology to the entire bug community for this error.