Director Louis Leterrier has said the Marvel Easter-egg hunt continues in The Incredible Hulk with an appearance by Captain America — he wouldn’t reveal where, though — but a few early reviews indicate the Sentinel of Liberty is nowhere to be seen.

So, what happened to Cap’s cameo?

Well, it’s either on the cutting-room floor, or it was never really there to begin with, depending upon whom you believe.

Warning: Fairly major spoilers follow after the break.

Speaking with the website Judao, Leterrier revealed:

“There’s a point when Bruce Banner gives up on his quest for the cure and decide to kill himself. So he travels far North and reaches the Arctic Circle. You might have seen bits of it in some of the promos. The result was a very dark and strong scene, which Marvel, me and everyone else’s considered to be too hard to young audiences to take, so we’ve cut it. Having that said, when Bruce arrives at his destination he meets up with Captain America! At some point this week, we will make it available on the internet — but I cannot tell you where or when — and the material will definitely be on the DVD.”

Part of the Arctic Circle scene remains in some of the trailers for The Incredible Hulk – that’s a shot of Banner crossing the snow and ice at the top of this post — and apparently shows up in the film’s opening montage.

But in an interview posted this morning at Latino Review, producer Gale Anne Hurd contends the character of Captain America isn’t in the movie:

LatinoReview: What was Louis talking about when he said Captain America was in the film?

Hurd: He didn’t really mean the character of Captain America, unless there’s something that I don’t know. It’s the serum.

LatinoReview: I felt that there was a presence around the film of Captain America, and not that you actually see him.

Hurd: Exactly.

LatinoReview: Is Captain America in the frozen tundra? Cause on the trailer we see Banner walking on the tundra and I wanted to know if Captain America was in that scene or not?

Hurd: Captain America was not visible in that scene.

LatinoReview: There was a lot of talk because you do see the Captain America shield in ‘Iron Man’

Hurd: Right. Well we do have the serum. If you look at the movie again you’ll see that the serum is Captain America.

That sound you hear is the collective scream of thousands of fans crying foul — or, more likely, a combination of other four-letter words that I probably shouldn’t repeat here.

Cinema Blend’s Josh Tyler gives voice to the imminent outrage by providing a brief timeline/summary of Leterrier’s statements: “It’s really starting to look like Louis Letterier is simply a liar, touting a cameo in hopes of luring more people into buying tickets to his movie, even though no such cameo exists. If that’s really what’s going on, that is not at all cool. Fans deserve better than to be lied to.”

If Hurd, and Tyler, are correct, we can expect the excitement generated among comics fans by the emerging continuity — or Easter eggs, whichever you prefer — in the Marvel movies to turn into something a little ugly. Brace yourselves for backlash.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 10:04 am and is filed under Fandom, Marvel, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.