First, I want to make it clear that Incredible Hulk is by no means a bad movie. It's a C+ at absolute worst. The problem lies entirely with outside forces. I mentioned a few months ago that the problem was the casting change from Edward Norton as Bruce Banner in Incredible Hulk to Mark Ruffalo in The Avengers. That's certainly a big part of it, but now I want to expand on that.
Bruce isn't just played by different actors in the two movies, he seems to be a completely different person. Banner's struggle to gain control is a driving plot point in The Incredible Hulk and by the end he seems to have obtained it. Norton's Bruce is very nervous; he's constantly afraid of the Hulk getting out. Ruffalo's Bruce, however, is so confident in his ability to control the beast within that he doesn't even flinch at Tony Stark's childish provocation. He's even slightly offended when Steve Rogers comes in to defend to him. Ideally, this would be seen as character growth tying the two movies together, but it doesn't quite work out like that. With the already apparent differences between the two movies it only serves as another inconsistency in the eyes of the audience.
The change in Bruce's ability to control the Hulk also highlights the absence of Incredible Hulk's supporting cast, especially Bruce's romantic interest Betty Ross. Ross, as played by Liv Tyler, is essential in Banner learning to control the monster. No one, not even Bruce himself, believes that he can curb the Hulk except for Betty. Every time Banner shows through the big green exterior it's because he makes eye contact with Betty and "Close to You" by the Carpenters plays or something like that. In The Avengers all he has to do to take the reins is always be angry.
There's a scene in The Incredible Hulk when Betty helps Bruce with his wardrobe after his clothes get destroyed by a transformation. Apparently her fashion advice doesn't take until The Avengers because the two Banner's have totally different looks. Incredible Hulk Bruce wears dirty, unassuming clothes, usually with a baseball cap covering his face, all to help him stay incognito. Avengers Bruce wears nice pants with a smart purple shirt. It's worth noting that Bruce is still in hiding at the beginning of The Avengers and even when Black Widow arrives to recruit him he's the best dressed person in the slums of Calcutta. It probably wasn't the first thing in most people's minds when they sat down in the theater for The Avengers but after a while even I noticed it and my biggest fashion influences are Clark Kent on Smallville and 12 year old me.
The visual distinctions go farther than just the clothes. Incredible Hulk looks completely unlike anything else in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. All of the other movies in the MCU take a naturalistic approach to color. It's a critical factor in establishing the realism of that world. In The Incredible Hulk everything is tinted green, all the way down to the soda made by the factory where Bruce works at the beginning of the movie.
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| Even the glow from the burning car has a hint of lime. |
By this point you may be wondering why I haven't shortened Incredible Hulk to just Hulk. That's because I'm going to have to distinguish it from the much maligned 2003 Hulk. I was eleven years old when that film was released. I was hungry for anything superhero related so I ignored the critics (it was not difficult, my subscription to The New York Times didn't start until several years later) and I watched the movie several times. As such, I feel confident saying there is little preventing Incredible Hulk from being a sequel to Hulk aside from anther cast change. There's about as much continuity between Hulk and Incredible Hulk as there is between Incredible Hulk and Avengers.
That's because Incredible Hulk started as a sequel to Hulk and never fully became not a sequel. At the time that it was released some people involved like Edward Norton and director Louis Leterrier tried to put as much distance between the two as possible while others were less definitive like producer Gale Anne Hurd, who called it a "re-quel." I, for one, wouldn't have been angry if it was a sequel, but the uncertain connection to Hulk puts Incredible Hulk in a kind of purgatory, not quite belonging to Ang Lee's 2003 universe nor the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The easy fix for this would have been to include the origin story in a larger capacity than just the opening credits. I know everyone was already sick of superhero origins by 2008 and it would have seemed redundant when the origin had just been done five years before, but Hulk's origin isn't as well known as other heroes. Spider-Man hasn't needed an origin story in over a decade because everyone knows the basics: (nerd + spider bite) - uncle = power = responsibility. The same formula was used in 2001 and 2012, all the way back to 1962. The Hulk's initial origin, on the other hand, wasn't in either of his films. If the average movie goer is basing their knowledge solely on the Hulk movies they probably think he got his powers in a lab accident, unaware that when he was created in the 60's Hulk was born from an explosion in the middle of the desert. As far as I can tell, the story that Bruce intentionally experimented on himself resulting in the Hulk comes from the 1978 TV series.
Again, Incredible Hulk is not a bad film. The fight sequences are at least as good as any smashing Hulk does in The Avengers. It's just as worthy of inclusion in the MCU as either Thor movie. It's simply different, which usually makes things more memorable but in this case does the opposite.
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| I don't know how to wrap this up so here's this gif of Lou Ferrigno throwing a bear. |
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