Bruce Banner was among the first characters we saw take on Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, and based on this recently released concept art, he could’ve also been among the last, too.
In the new artbook Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War – The Art of the Movie, we see the final battle against the Mad Titan unfolding in a rather different manner than the sequence that made the movie, with heroes like Captain America and Black Widow holding Thanos down while Thor delivers that infamous blow to the chest.
But perhaps the biggest change we observe in these illustrations is that Mark Ruffalo’s character is fully Hulked out, suggesting that Bruce has either managed to work through his issues with his big, green alter ego, or he never had his transformation difficulties in the first place. Either way, it’s pretty clear that this rematch with Thanos would’ve ended in defeat once more, though that’s arguably more Thor’s fault than Hulk’s.
Speaking of characters screwing up, another thing of note about these images is that they bear a striking resemblance to the struggle on Titan, which ended with Peter Quill inadvertently ruining the team’s plan to take away Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet. This suggests that at one point, the Russo Brothers were either considering including two sequences where our heroes pin down the tyrant in near-identical ways, or a different set piece was planned for the fight on Titan. In this alternate version, Quill might not have even made the same mistake, though again, we can assume that Thanos would’ve triumphed regardless.
In any case, the new Avengers: Infinity War artbook offers a whole load of suggestions for how the year’s biggest film could’ve turned out differently, but if you’d like to see how our heroes play the hand they were ultimately dealt, Avengers 4 will be hitting theaters on May 3rd, 2019.