Last month, we reported on some pieces of concept art for Avengers: Infinity War that showed Doctor Strange wearing Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor. Concept artist Phil Saunders posted pictures to his Instagram account featuring Stephen Strange donning the Iron Man suit, complete with the Eye of Agamotto replacing the arc reactor as the armor’s chest piece. According to filmmaker Kevin Smith, this scene was not just concept art but was actually shot for the film!
As we’ve reported, the concept art in question depicts Stephen Strange encased in Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit while engaged in battle with Ebony Maw aboard one of Thanos’ ships.
This differs heavily from the sequence in the final film where Spider-Man proposes just blowing a hole in the ship to suck Maw out into space. The director of Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob recently talked about the deleted scene on one of his podcasts, saying:
“There’s footage or a photo of Robert Downey Jr wearing the cape that came out long before Infinity War came out, so we know they shot it. We know personally that they shot it because when the writers came and spoke to us at the house before they left, they were like ‘You wanna see something?’ And they pulled out the phone and literally showed us, not just a drawing cause that’s what’s going around the internet is there’s a drawing and it looks badass, but they showed us f—ing Sherlock in the Iron Man f—ing suit man. Like wearing the suit, with Tony standing next to him wearing the cape, and we were like ‘WHAT THE F—?,’ and they were like ‘We can’t say, never talk about it.’ Then it’s out in the world and I’m like ‘We saw that photo!’ It looked badass.”
The image that Kevin Smith is speaking of comes from a Marvel Studios featurette that was put out on YouTube back in April 2018. In the clip, which focuses on the family aspects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is a quick blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of RDJ wearing Doctor Strange’s Cloak of Levitation on the set of Avengers: Infinity War, as seen below…
At the time, many fans questioned the shot, but most chalked it up to the actors just goofing around on set and playing with each other’s props. Now it seems this sequence where Iron Man and Doctor Strange swapped each other’s signature outfits was a very real part of the movie before being left on the cutting room floor for unknown reasons. So far, Marvel Studios has not released the deleted scene in question, but it would be great to see such a unique and fun idea play out in live-action, even if it was ultimately not included in the final film.