Avengers: Endgame is the biggest adventure the Marvel Cinematic Universe has seen so far, as it brought together all the active superheroes in the MCU to battle Thanos and his armies. Such a big event left many scenes on the cutting room floor, which could make way for an almost 4-hour director’s cut, but thankfully, that version will never be released. The first three phases of the MCU led to the big events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, in which Thanos finally acquired all the Infinity Stones and the Infinity Gauntlet and fulfilled his plans of wiping out half of life in the universe.
After watching some of the MCU’s most beloved characters turn into dust, such as Spider-Man and Bucky Barnes, Avengers: Endgame saw the surviving heroes joining forces to come up with a plan to undo the snap. The solution was the Time Heist, through which the heroes traveled back in time to get the Infinity Stones before Thanos did, and while they succeeded and were able to undo the snap, they also made it possible for a past version of Thanos to arrive to the present with all of his armies. This made way for the Battle of Earth, the biggest battle in the MCU so far, and it all ended with Iron Man’s final snap and sacrifice.
Due to the complexity of the Time Heist and the Battle of Earth, as well as the number of characters in the story, Avengers: Endgame was three hours long, and of course, there were many scenes that didn’t make it to the final cut. In an interview with WIRED, Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo revealed that the longest cut they had was 3 hours and 40 minutes long, and as they fully approve of those extra 40 minutes being cut, the final version of the movie is, essentially, the director’s cut, so a longer version will never be released – and that’s a good thing.
Avengers: Endgame's Deleted Scenes Don't Justify An Extended Cut Release
Being three hours long, Avengers: Endgame is the longest MCU movie to date, and those three hours were put to good use. Endgame has various subplots in addition to the Time Heist and the Battle of Earth, and they were all addressed, given time to develop, and given closure, and it also delivered on most of what the audience wanted, with various fan-service moments such as the A-Force tease and Captain America proving he was worthy of Mjolnir. With that in mind, an almost 4-hour cut of Avengers: Endgame would be completely unnecessary, and based on the deleted scenes that have been released, there’s not much that the extra material could add to the story, and in some cases, they would mess with the pace of some of the movie’s most important scenes.
Out of the Avengers: Endgame deleted scenes, the only one that could add something to the story is the Soulworld scene with Tony and Morgan Stark. In it, after snapping his fingers and thus defeating Thanos and his armies, Tony Stark would have found himself in the Soulworld, where he would have met a grown-up version of his daughter, Morgan, who reassured him that everything would be ok without him around. Still, as heartwarming as the scene is, it would have messed with the pace of the scene of Iron Man’s sacrifice, and it might have been a confusing scene to many as up to that point, Morgan had only appeared as a five-year-old. Although director’s cuts can be fun and in some cases they can make big changes to the story, Avengers: Endgame doesn’t need one, and as the Russo brothers said, the director’s cut is the one that made it to the big screen.
