Avengers: Age of Ultron was jam-packed with cameo appearances from Marvel cinematic universe characters, but fan favorite Loki wasn't among them.
We've known actor Tom Hiddleston filmed a scene for Age of Ultron that didn't appear in the final film, but we didn't know exactly why. The reason? Loki's brief appearance was apparently confusing audiences in test screenings, as revealed by Hiddleston himself in a new interview with Digital Spy.
"I was part of the dream sequence for the character of Thor," Hiddleston said. "I shot for a day and enjoyed it very much, and then I received a phone call from [Marvel's] Kevin Feige [who] said that in test screenings, audiences had overemphasized Loki's role. They thought that because I was in it, I was controlling Ultron, and it was actually imbalancing people's expectations so [director] Joss [Whedon] and Kevin were like, ‘Let's cut it because it's confusing people.'... It made sense to me when I saw that film."
That means Thor's dream sequence could have been even more confusing. The scene already felt a little out of place in the final version of the film, with the entire sequence apparently being on the cutting board at one point. Director Joss Whedon fought to have it included and Marvel obliged — but it looks like both parties agreed that having Loki appear did more harm than good.
It makes sense why the scene was cut. Loki played a major role in the first Avengers film and in the original Thor. Moviegoers are used to the villain pulling the strings, and if you haven't kept up with each Marvel movie, it would be easy to misunderstand Loki's appearance.
Loki fans, however, don't need to worry. Actor Tom Hiddleston is still contracted to appear in three more Marvel movies, with Thor: Ragnarok among them. When we last saw the character in Thor: The Dark World, he had tricked Thor into believing he was dead before proceeding to impersonate Odin. That should make create an interesting scenario in films to come and hopefully plenty more Hiddleston to go around.
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