Riot’s Rants: The Slow, Painful Death of The Hulk
Like most young children, little Riot could never be found without his prized possession (two of them actually), little rubber Hulk figurines. These toys were so beloved, so essential to my daily life, that I actually dove out of a moving car after dropping one in the gutter (true story). There’s a delightful photo floating around in the ether somewhere of my Hulk Halloween costume, complete with green face paint, black haired wig, and a green sweater that contained a foam-carved set of pecs and abs my father made for me. Historically, the family really commits to dressing up. As a comic book nerd growing up in the 90’s, most of us never fathomed that the graphic novel world would be brought to life in the stunning way that it has been today. Regardless of quality, we should consider ourselves blessed that we have been treated to this immense catalog of films and television shows that pushes so far beyond the limits of reality. That being said, I’ve never taken the time to flesh out the overabundance of disappointment I have when it comes to the portrayal of my mean, green, smashing machine, The Incredible Hulk.
Hulk: I’ll start off by saying that the Lou Ferrigno Hulk was before my time. So with the advancements in CGI, I was over-the-moon excited to see the first go at a full-sized, rampaging monster. Hulk had a lot going for it to be honest. It had a solid budget, a great director in Ang Lee, and some big Hollywood names whose work I definitely respected. Particularly, I thought Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly were good fits for the characters. But as it turned out, we got a bit of a mess of a film. Stylistically, the over-reliance on the “comic book” stylings ended up being a big mistake and toying with Hulk’s size in respect to his anger ended up looking silly. But really nothing could be as silly as the Gamma Dogs; there isn’t enough face palms.
The Incredible Hulk: Five years later, we were treated to the last solo film for the green machine, The Incredible Hulk. This run at Hulk’s story also had a fantastic casting (nods to Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, and Tim Roth) but had the advantage of even smoother, more realistic special effects. Bruce Banner’s (Hulk’s) origin story is a complicated one to be sure, so by avoiding this aspect, The Incredible Hulk had every opportunity to be an amazing film. Though I still argue it’s the best rendition we’ve had so far, poor writing and plot holes as big as Hulk kept it from being a truly great film. What worked especially well was 1) having a compelling villain and 2) actually sticking to Hulk’s anger as the foundation of his powers. This was truly the most violent of the Hulks and paid legitimate homage to its source material.
Avengers 1+2: Then, Marvel Studios made a deal to gain some creative rights to The Hulk, the stipulation being that Hulk couldn’t be featured in a solo film. That formula has been maintained to this day and is the marker for where the deterioration of the character began. I want to preface this part of the rant by saying I legitimately liked The Avengers andAvengers: Age of Ultron as films in their own right and initially, I didn’t have any arguments against Mark Ruffalo taking over the mantle. But again, Hulk suffered quite a bit by ways of design and character development. For both films, the CGI artists went with an Ape-like physical demeanor. He was overly hunched over, top heavy in proportion, and even looked strangely overweight. It wasn’t necessarily a bad design if it stood alone, but in having Norton’s Hulk be its predecessor, it certainly looked like a downgrade overall. Credit where it’s due, Joss Whedon and the MCU did right by the savagery of the character and gave us some of the most memorable fight scenes in Avengers history. But to contrast that, they began Hulk on the path to being the butt of as many jokes as possible, a trend that would eventually culminate in “yoga Hulk,” but we will touch on that later. The MCU’s second go at Hulk would see the continuation of another frustrating trend: the Hulk’s endless streak of “L’s”, personally and in battle. His loss to Tony and the HulkBuster armor is particularly egregious to me, not because it happened, but because of the way it went down. Age of Ultron took the position that the line between Hulk and Banner is more blurred than it should be. Using the romance storyline with Black Widow added an interesting depth to the character but ended up begging the question of how active/aware Bruce Banner is inside Hulk’s head. This in turn made it a bit confusing when Taika Waititi and Thor: Ragnarok took over the narrative. Waititi leaned hard into the big, dumb, loser version of both Hulk and Banner. Granted, he was making a full-fledged comedy film but Banner, previously competing with Tony Stark as the Avenger’s #1 intellectual, never recovered from his dummy, butt of all jokes demeanor. As I’ve written about before, Ragnarok did irreparable damage to an amazing story in Planet Hulk. And considering the current rumors about the MCU’s intentions to explore the World War Hulk storyline, I find it hard to believe they will find a way to recover from the harm done. (Context here being, the events of Planet Hulk are necessary to create the motivations for World War Hulk).
Thor: Ragnarok: Ragnarok offered up a rematch that we were all waiting for. And in most senses, it delivered. Yet Waititi, unhindered on the unnecessary path of butchering the Planet Hulk storyline, cheapened Hulk’s “victory” against Thor. For all intents and purposes, the fight is another mark in the “L” column. I think what grinds my gears the most about it is they could’ve taken creative licensing and made any other scenario to play into this story structure. Instead, they degraded compelling and functional source material and are now forced to likely use off-screen events to set up a future project. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where this doesn’t become confusing to future viewers. Ragnarok took the most spectacular transformation scene (Norton’s helicopter dive) and made it into a stupid one-off joke. Then, to add insult to injury, he essentially takes another “L” against Fenrir and is saved only by way of his environment. Ragnarok dismantled the “character development” that Age of Ultron shoe-horned in, where the line between Hulk and Banner was blurred, however momentarily. Bruce becomes obsessed with the idea that he was “trapped” inside the Hulk for two years. As we soon saw, this became one of the catalysts for the worst Hulk Transformation yet: Smart (Professor) Hulk (I will expand on this later).
Infinity War: Unfortunately for Hulk aficionados, the hits just kept on coming. Infinity War hit the ground running for demeaning the green giant. After allowing Hulk to be brutalized by Thanos in his cheapest fight yet, the Russo Brothers took it a step further by then showing the Hulk refuse to transform and continue the fight against Thanos’ army. I’ve often wondered what the possible purpose of this move was. It did nothing for the character’s development and ensured that Ruffalo continued being the brunt of cheap jokes. I can’t imagine the studio even saved that much time and money, considering they had to immediately get working on the CGI of Banner piloting the HulkBuster armor (which of course had to trip and fall during the fight for yet another pitiful laugh at Banner’s expense).
(The Smart Hulk I knew)
(The Smart Hulk I got)
Endgame: Finally, we come to the Endgame. In terms of redemption, the most I can say is that they tried. Banner (again in off-screen events that could have been far more interesting than anything that went down in Ragnarok) has scientifically conquered the beast, merging his brains into the brawn of Hulk’s body, ergo Smart (Professor) Hulk. And how does the MCU celebrate this incredible feat? Yup, stupid jokes, complete with selfies and low-brow catch phrases. When the events of the story start to pick up though, at least we see Banner finally putting arguably his greatest super power to use, his intellect. That unfortunately doesn’t stop the MCU from ensuring he consistently plays second fiddle to Tony Stark at literally every stage (including the famous snap). At best, this storyline allows for the development of a treasured friendship, which I would argue is a great aspect to the through-line of Bruce’s journey. But Banner’s intellectual prowess seems consistently on the downgrade and it’s often hard to tell if it’s due more to Ruffalo’s increasingly bad performances, or the slow degradation of good screenwriting (why not both?!). Again, I’d like to emphasize that this rant isn’t against any single one of these films overall, I’m simply evaluating the lack of respect given to my favorite character. At minimum though, at least I could come away with an immortalized moment: Bruce replacing Ant-Man’s lost tacos. The Pop! currently sits on my collector’s shelf at home.
She-Hulk: Yes, indeed obscure Simpsons child. He is certainly already dead. Man, She-Hulk is as bad as it can be. Setting aside whatever agenda Disney is trying to jam down our throats on this one, can anyone legitimately pick out a single, redeemable aspect of this show so far? The CGI, bad. The acting, bad. The character development, so awful I want to cry. Although breaking the fourth wall is consistent to the source material, She-Hulk does it in such an on-the-nose way that it removes anything remotely playful or fun about it. It’s beyond obvious that the writers are desperately trying to ride on the coat tails of the success of Deadpool, otherwise they could just drop the fourth wall function and I don’t think anyone would notice. Yet it is simply not funny. And it only took one episode to have the audience desperate for Yoga Hulk to float away into oblivion (it hurts me to say this, but maybe it would have been better for him to die in Endgame than to continue to having his character destroyed as it has been). The She-Hulk writers need to course correct immediately on its emasculation and degradation of male characters (Wong, Banner, and Abomination) and start giving Jennifer Walters something tangible for people to root for. Actively shirking the responsibility that comes with great power is not a good look.
All in all, the future is not bright for The Hulk. And yet, I’ll probably continue watching, hoping beyond hope that they can turn this ship around. My advice? Stop making Hulk a loser. Stop making Banner an idiot. Give Walters something selfless to do for s***’s sake! (This guy says it best I think). I want to like the Hulks again.
Hulk smash! 👊