Why shouldn’t the MCU get rid of Edward Norton taking on the Hulk?

2008 Incredible Hulk Not a failure at all. It more than refund its budgetand it scored a Metacritic Rating that puts it comfortably in the “not great but not bad” category. However, it was quickly dropped from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Edward Norton takes on the remastered Marvel’s Green Mean Machine, with Mark Ruffalo replacing him and taking on a very different role to the Hulk. Most of Incredible Hulk was reduced to a blink cameo and you’ll remember it in 2012 Avengers.

But around 2021, the movie Norton become relevant again as Disney began to incorporate elements from the movie back into the MCU continuity, starting with Tim Roth returning as Emil Blonsky, aka Abomination, in a cameo in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and then a guest star on She-Hulk: Lawyer.

Establishing a stronger relationship between before and after in the MCU Hulk feels especially important to She is heavy, a series that seems to have ended Bruce Banner’s story so he could pass the torch on to his cousin. After a series of movies where Ruffalo’s character went mad as Banner, only Hulk, and a combination of the two in the form of Professor Hulk (Bruce’s mind in Hulk’s body, a hybrid made his debut in… Avengers: Game over), it seems that the potential of that character has been fully exploited. So it makes sense to clear the stage for a brand new Hulk. Not just a female character, but also a funnier character: Comics She is heavy basically the original Deadpool, complete with fourth wall breaking jokes.

But the potential of MCU Hulk is far from exhausted. There’s still so much that the writers of the Marvel blockbusters haven’t done with him. And the foundation was laid in Incredible Hulk.

Photo: Universal Pictures/Marvel Enterprises

There are two notable things that later Marvel movies failed to match from Ed Norton’s films. The first is Tim Blake Nelson, who at the end of the film begins to transform into the classic Hulk villain The Leader. When the MCU abandoned that idea, audiences missed out on a great character with infinite wisdom and vanity, plus remote control and inability to die. Besides, teasing more about Tim Blake Nelson in a series without doing it would be a felony. The second thing we lose is a wild, ferocious, unconversable, and uncontrollable Hulk — a scarier, more exciting version of the character that closely resembles the original comic book version of the Hulk. he’s like a werewolf radioactive substance.

The stakes for Hulk are higher from the first few seconds of Incredible Hulk, where we see Norton as Bruce Banner experimenting with a cure for gamma radiation poisoning, which caused his transformation. We watch from his POV as he hurts those around him, including his girlfriend Betty (Liv Tyler), who sees him as a terrifying monster with no connection to Lee. Xiao Long.

Directed by Louis Leterrier do all this without dialogue, only through visuals. That increases the intensity, helping the shot go straight to the brains of the audience, where it’s treated like a horror movie. That’s really the core of what makes Incredible Hulk So great. It is not a true horror film, but many parts of it, including the main character, are horror or are adjacent to horror.

By going this route, Leterrier has done some particularly memorable things with the Hulk that give the character more depth. For example, whenever this version of Bruce reverts to human form, Norton will play him as clearly exhausted, terrified, and traumatized. After the battle at Culver College, when Betty checked herself and Bruce into a motel, the character, who had just discharged thermos-sized bullets, became a shivering mess wrapped in blankets. . He can’t talk, he can barely move, and when he somehow manages to take a shower, he begins to relive the trauma of the fight, where he’s out of control. himself and was shot. After so many Marvel movies in which superheroes face off against space demons, the Goddess of Death, and an alien wielding the power of the universe, it seems like a character’s fear of guns can be overwhelming. become alien. But it’s not weird – it’s human. Ed Norton’s Hulk is the new man.

Photo: Universal Pictures/Marvel Enterprises

Compare that scene with Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk for the first time in The Avengers, fell to Earth, turned back into a human, and immediately started making jokes with a security guard. Neither is focusing on trauma better than comic relief – both are valid for the Hulk that can be helped by some comic book iteration. And there’s no denying that Mark Ruffalo’s performance resonated with audiences, helping to make Hulk an A-list superhero. But despite Ruffalo’s Bruce talking about how he’s afraid of “the other guy” like Either way, his version of Hulk is still a hero, someone who suddenly seems as out of control as he needs to be whenever the action demands it. Ed Norton’s Hulk is not.

The 2008 movie repeats that point over and over again, most notably right after the battle at Culver University, where Hulk takes the unconscious Betty away and hides them both from the rain, hiding under an overhanging rock. When she woke up, she screamed when she saw him. Then we see Hulk shouting into the storm and throwing rocks at it. This Hulk is not a superhero, he is a powerful animal. He’s basically a giant ape, sentient to some degree, but ultimately acting on animalistic instincts. That’s why when it came to the final battle between this character and the Abomination, Norton’s Banner did not intend to change, and then hoped that Hulk would choose to be a noble person and save that day. Instead, he hopes to “aim” the green monster at another, and prays like hell that he doesn’t harm any innocent people along the way.

The strange thing is, Detachment of revenge looks like it will give us that Hulk at first, with a fierce, dangerous Ruffalo-Hulk and an inability to distinguish friend from foe. However, later in the same movie, co-writers Joss Whedon and Zak Penn downplayed his wild side and turned him into a marketable Green Giant who understands human speech. human, waiting for Captain America’s instructions to smash things and save Iron Man when he falls to the ground. sky. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that — but there’s a clear difference between the Hulk at the beginning and end of the movie, with no obvious reason for the change.

Image: Universal Pictures/Marvel Enterprises

So why not fix that? What if the MCU went back to that version of the character? We glimpse it in Superhero Squad: Age of Ultron, when the Scarlet Witch tampered with the Hulk’s mind, but there were plenty of hidden stories about a more dangerous, less polite Hulk, a Hulk who couldn’t really be called an Avenger because he didn’t have the brains to match. participation of a team. A Hulk would probably have to be “contained” and targeted at enemies the Avengers can’t handle, which raises the kinds of huge ethical questions the MCU might occasionally consider.

All of that can still be done. Professor Hulk isn’t necessarily the final character in the MCU. Hundreds of different things can happen to uncover more of the Hulk as a wild killing machine. If only Marvel and Disney really wanted that. They might not, because he’s more marketed as a superhero. But the choice is still on the table, just waiting for someone to pick it up and continue what Incredible Hulk started 15 years ago.