Originally Posted by
Sutekh
It could have been fun to have a 20-30 second stinger at the end of the first Avengers movie in which we see a giant figure appear underneath the Leviathan that flips over and collapses on Grand Central Station, having flipped it and slammed it down, and then shrink out of sight, and Tony exclaim, 'What was that!' and Fury reply over his headset, 'Did you think you were the only special people I have on speed-dial, Stark?' Meanwhile, cut to Hawkeye, running out of arrows, and muttering into his comm, 'Out of arrows here...' and a woman's voice say, 'On it.' and a tiny winged figure zip by and zap a Chitauri climbing up to his perch, and dropping a tiny thing at Hawkeye's feet that expands into a full size quiver full of arrows. Hawkeye mutters, 'Thanks' and goes back to shooting. Just a tiny bit added to two scenes already in the movie (the Leviathan flipping over and crashing into Grand Central Station and Hawkeye running out of arrows on the rooftop) and it could have teased the appearances of Hank and Janet, without necessarily bloating the movie by adding them in a more significant role.
(A similar 20-30 second stinger could have introduced Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Recut the scene with the Chitauri encircling Cap and the others on the bridge, where Thor shows up and lightning blasts them all, to have a blur of motion and all the Chitauri blasters appear in a pile at Cap's feet, as Fury comes over the comms, 'Back up should be en route, Cap.' and Cap sees the guns and a blur of wind as the speedster departs (no clear image, so that they don't even have to cast anyone yet!) and Cap replies, 'I think he's already come and gone...' before wading into the now-unarmed Chitauri. And at the very end, Iron Man flies into space and the blurry figure appears next a woman in a cape that we only see from behind, in the shadows of an alley. The woman says, 'When that bomb explodes, what are the odds that a feedback pulse will electrocute all the remaining Chitauri?' The man replies, '100%?' She answers, hands fluttering and rubble around her levitating as she casts a hex, '100%.' and the bomb goes off, and all the Chitauri just fall over, exactly as she predicted. Just recut and recontextualize some scenes already in the movie, and bam, tease Hank and Janet, *and* Pietro and Wanda, without having to actually show the actors, in case these roles haven't been cast yet.)
But no. Whedon couldn't use the Wasp, in particular, because he was told that the Shawn of the Dead guy had dibs on her, only for it to come up a few years later from Peyton Reed that Janet *wasn't even in the original Ant-Man script* he got (from Cornish?), so Whedon would totally have been able to use her...
