“I am Iron Man” became a sentence that brought many moviegoers to tears in 2019, but it seems Avengers: Endgame could have used a different line.

There are some moments in cinema that seem to have been set in stone for eons, just waiting for their time to come. One of those is certainly the conclusion of Avengers: Endgame, when Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man lifted his hand and uttered the words, “I am Iron Man.” As the completing of a circle, the line brought the character of Tony Stake right back to where he began, and it is a line that is hard to imagine having a comparable alternative. So when Downey Jr. appeared on the Hypocondriactor Podcast and said that he wanted to drop an F-bomb in his iconic moment, it was hard to believe that it was more than a joke option.

While appearing on the podcast, the actor revealed that the now immortal line was not the only one considered, and he couldn’t even say if the line was written by one of the scriptwriters or just happened be something that came about before filming. While the idea of Tony Stark kneeling before Thanos moments ahead of his death and slapping a load of profanity in his face does indeed sound like something Stark would be capable of, as Downey Jr. explained, there was a reason why it ended up as it did.

“Correct answer is ‘I am Iron Man,’ but I had so many alt lines that I wanted to put forward. Oh god, let me think. They were all super smart-ass lines like I was trying to, y’know, dumb stuff like, ‘You are so f—ed’ or whatever. You know what, I’ll have to go back to my notes… I get the Infinity Stones and then have the power to snap and have whatever I wanna have happen–Oh, tha- I was gonna say ‘Oh, snap.’ [The alternate lines were] too smart-ass, and it was the whole arc of the character. It was, I think… maybe one of our great editors’ ideas, or one of the writers to say we need to go right back to the first film, and have his dying words be the words of his origin….We love a bookend.”

Iron Man’s Final Iconic Moments Turns Out Not to Be The Biggest Thing The MCU Has to Offer

Avengers: Endgame came with a lot of expectations, and the three-hour epic finale to the Infinity Saga certainly paid off with a record-breaking cinematic run that Marvel fans had been waiting for a long time. While the final battle and Iron Man’s sacrifice were seemingly the peak of what the MCU could possibly give, just a few movies down the line and fans are now awaiting what seems like being another epic piece of the Marvel jigsaw.

Since Spider-Man: No Way Home arrived at the end of 2021, it seems that the multiverse could potentially bring about something even bigger than Endgame in the long run. That probably means another seven or eight years of story down the line. Still, the big players are already coming out, with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness having gone from potentially interesting movie to must-see Marvel film of the year thanks to its rumored cameos, introductions and variations on some well-loved characters. For those who believed the words “I am Iron Man” were some kind of closing of the book for the MCU, it was clearly just the end of the first chapter.

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