The MCU continues to roll on strong more than a decade after its inception. The blockbuster franchise has found a way to seamlessly tell a cohesive story between big-screen theatrical films, Disney+ streaming series, and, at one point, a couple of in-canon one-shots. While the movies and shows have enjoyed continued success, these smaller one-shots have seemingly been abandoned by Marvel Studios.
All of these smaller side stories - which were primarily extras found on early MCU DVDs - have made their way onto Disney+. While most do not do much to move the greater Marvel story forward, they were fun little jaunts elsewhere in the universe, that mostly expanded on what was already there.
While Marvel Studios continues to look forward to their next decade of super-powered storytelling, having their projects on an in-house streaming service has made for some interesting moments of them looking back. Having Disney+ at hand has allowed the studio to go back and make edits to things that may have been acceptable at one point, but no longer are.
Well, a couple of eagle-eyed fans have spotted another of these small alterations, and it comes in the Iron Man 3 one-shot All Hail the King.
Making Changes to All Hail the King
The Direct reader Shea Hauver spotted a small change that Marvel Studios has made to the Disney+ version of the MCU one-shot All Hail the King.
The Trevor Slattery-centric short sees the Iron Man 3 villain in prison with his fellow inmates either honoring his celebrity or questioning if he was the real Mandarin. This newly discovered edit in the on-shot happens at around the 2:15 mark where a racial slur has seemingly been censored.
The original dialogue of the scene between Slattery and a pair of inmates went as follows:
White Power Dave: You know what I want right now?
Trevor Slattery: Autograph?
Dave: I want to give the world exactly what it's been crying out for. Your dead body laid out on a goddamn slab.
Herman: Hey, cracker! What's up?
Trevor: Ahhh, it's the fan base. Kiss my rings, bitch.
And the new version simply has Herman saying "Hey! What's Up?"
This derogatory term is used as a racial epithet directed toward people of Caucasian descent and has been deemed offensive by some.
The Slippery Slope of Edits
While this edit could be looked upon as questionable, it makes sense for Disney to purge something that may be deemed offensive by some from their catalog. But it is a little bizarre that it was this instance that they decided to take on first.
Yes, a potential slur is now gone, but just moments later Slattery himself uses the word "bitch" which has the potential to offend as well. This whole thing seems like a slippery slope for Disney and Marvel to be going down.
With Disney+ at their fingertips, Marvel and Disney can censor anything at any moment; fans have already seen it with slight alterations made to lessen the violence in shows like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (which was then edited back). No longer are audiences left with what was on the DVD or VHS. In this streaming reality, changes can be made at any time.
But when does this stop? With the breadth of content on Disney+ (especially in international regions with Star content on the service), there are surely going to be things that will offend. Could this be the beginning of a bigger plan to scrub the service from anything worthy of uproar?
The language used here was not as bad as it could have been, and if there is something truly offensive on the service, then yes, maybe it should be looked at. It just does make one question: at what point will it be enough?
