The MCU shouldn’t have discarded Edward Norton’s Hulk

2008 The Incredible Hulk was by no means a failure. It has more than earned back its budgetand scored one Metacritical review that lands it comfortably in the “not great, but not bad” category. However, it was quickly discarded from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Edward Norton’s take on Marvel’s Green Mean Machine was retired, with Mark Ruffalo replacing him and doing a very different take on Hulk. The most of The Incredible Hulk was reduced to a wink in 2012 and you will miss it The Avengers.

But around 2021, the Norton movie became relevant again as Disney started incorporating 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 later as a guest star She-Hulk: lawyer.

Forming stronger bonds between earlier and later versions of the MCU Hulk felt especially important She Hulk, a series that seemed to bring Bruce Banner’s story to an end so he could pass the torch to his nephew. After a number of movies where Ruffalo’s character went on a rampage as just Banner, just Hulk, and a mix of the two in the form of Professor Hulk (Bruce’s mind in Hulk’s body, a hybrid that debuted in Avengers: endgame), it really felt like that character’s potential had been fully realized. So it made sense to clear the stage for an all-new Hulk. Not just a feminine take on the character, but also a more comedic one: the comic book She Hulk was basically the original Deadpool, complete with fourth-wall-breaking gags.

But the potential for the MCU Hulk is far from exhausted. There are still so many things the Marvel blockbuster writers haven’t done with him. And the foundations had already been laid The Incredible Hulk.

There are two notable things that later Marvel movies failed to transplant from the Ed Norton movie. The first is Tim Blake Nelson, who started to transform into the classic Hulk villain The Leader at the end of the film. When the MCU dropped that idea, audiences missed out on a cool character with boundless intellect and vanity, plus telekinesis and the inability to die. Besides, teasing more of Tim Blake Nelson in a franchise without making it happen should be a felony. The second thing we’ve lost is a feral animalistic Hulk who can’t hold a conversation and can’t be controlled – a scarier, more exciting version of the character that’s much closer to the comics’ original version of him as something like a radioactive character. werewolf.

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

Director Louis Leterrier does all this without dialogue, only through images. That ramps up the intensity, taking the scene straight to the lizard part of the audience’s gray matter, where it’s processed in a similar way to a horror movie. That’s really the core of what makes The Incredible Hulk very well. It’s not a proper horror movie, but many parts of it, including the take on the titular character, are horror or horror-adjacent.

By going this route, Leterrier has done some particularly memorable things with Hulk that add depth to the character. For example, whenever this version of Bruce returns to human form, Norton plays him off as clearly exhausted, terrified, and traumatized. After the fight at Culver University, when Betty checks herself and Bruce into a motel, this character who just shook off bullets the size of thermoses is reduced to a hair-raising mess covered in a blanket. He can’t talk, he can barely move, and when he somehow manages to get into the shower, he begins to relive the trauma of the fight where he couldn’t control himself and got shot at . After so many Marvel movies pitting superheroes against space demons, the goddess of death, and an alien imbued with the great powers of the cosmos, a character afraid of guns seems almost odd. But it’s not strange – it’s human. Ed Norton’s Hulk is refreshingly human.

Photo: Universal Pictures/Marvel Enterprises

Compare that scene to the first time Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner transforms into the Hulk in The Avengers, falls to earth, transforms back into human and immediately starts joking with a guard. It’s not that focusing on trauma is better than comic relief – both are valid versions of Hulk that can be bolstered by a rehash of the comics. And there’s no denying that Mark Ruffalo’s performance has been a huge hit with audiences, making Hulk an A-list superhero. But as much as Ruffalo’s Bruce talks about how scared he is of “the other guy,” his version of Hulk is still a hero, one who suddenly seems to be in control when needed when the action calls for it. Ed Norton’s Hulk isn’t.

The 2008 movie hammers home that point over and over, most notably right after the Culver University fight, where Hulk takes the unconscious Betty away and hides them both from the rain, tucked away under a rock. When she wakes up, she screams at the sight of him. Later we see Hulk yelling at the storm and throwing rocks at it. This Hulk is not a superhero, he is a powerful animal. He’s basically a giant ape, with some degree of sentience, but ultimately operating on animal instinct. That’s why when it comes to the final showdown between this character and Abomination, Norton’s Banner isn’t about to change, then hope that Hulk chooses to be noble and save the day. Instead, he hopes to “point” the green monster at the other monster and pray frantically that he doesn’t hurt innocent people along the way.

The weird thing is, The Avengers it seemed like it would give us that Hulk in the beginning, with a Ruffalo-Hulk who is feral, dangerous, and unable to tell friend from foe. But later in the same movie, co-writers Joss Whedon and Zak Penn reset his wildness and turn him into the Marketable Hulk, who understands human speech, waits for Captain America’s instructions to smash things, and saves Iron Man when he falls from the sky . the sky. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that shot – but there’s an obvious divide between Hulk at the beginning of the movie and at the end, with no apparent reason for the change.

Image: Universal Pictures/Marvel Enterprises

So why not fix that? What if the MCU goes back to that version of the character? We see glimpses of it The Avengers: Age of Ultron, when Scarlet Witch messes with Hulk’s mind, but there’s so much more story potential for a more dangerous, less urbane Hulk, a Hulk who can’t really be called an Avenger because he doesn’t have enough mind to agree to be part of a squad . A Hulk who should probably be “contained” and targeted at enemies the Avengers can’t handle, which raises the kind of huge ethical questions the MCU might occasionally consider.

That was all still possible. Professor Hulk doesn’t have to be the last word on the character in the MCU. A hundred different things can happen to further explore Hulk as a savage killing machine. If only Marvel and Disney wanted that. Probably not, because he’s more marketable as a superhero. But the option is still on the table, waiting for someone to pick it up and get on with what The Incredible Hulk started 15 years ago.