Watch an Alternate Opening for 'The Avengers'

As deleted scenes begin to arrive from "The Avengers," it's becoming clear that Joss Whedon had some very different ideas about the tone of the film from the early going. First we saw an extended Hulk scene that got all philosophical on us, and now an alternate opening to the movie shows a much darker approach.

The original opening was pretty action-packed, as we watched Hawkeye, Nick Fury and the SHIELD agents deal with Loki coming through the Tesseract. There wasn't much time for philosophical reflection or establishment of deep emotional rifts, what with all the car chases and self-destructing facilities and whatnot.

This deleted opening takes a much different approach: it centers on Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) after the big battle in New York City. But rather than taking a celebratory tone (obviously the Avengers won in the end), Hill talks about the destruction that came of the fight and how it could have been avoided.

In the speech, she scoffs a bit at Fury, whom she clearly has some disagreements with. It seems that originally their relationship was to be much more strained, with Hill disapproving of the Avengers initiative.

Check out the alternate "Avengers" opening below: