Proceeding chronologically, we watched 2008’s Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk starring Edward Norton and Liv Tyler (just in case you have forgotten).
There’s an important scene toward the end of the film between the soldier now chasing the Hulk and a rogue doctor who tried to find a cure.
Emil Blonsky: “I want more. You've seen what he becomes, right?”
Samuel Sterns: “I have. And it's beautiful.”
Sterns then gives Blonsky (played well by Tim Roth) a serum that turns him into the Abomination, which leads to the climatic battle of the film.
This, I think, is the ongoing issue with the Hulk. Bruce Banners spends all his time searching for a cure. He does not want to be the Hulk. But viewers and readers of the comic all think it would be pretty cool to be the Hulk. Come on, admit it. You have wondered how it would feel to have all that power, right? To get huge and muscled and be able to smash things and leap for miles. I know I have.
At one point, on the run and driving at night, Betty Ross and Bruce have the following exchange:
Betty: What is it like? When it happens, what do you experience?
Bruce: “Remember those experiments we volunteered for at Harvard? Those induced hallucination? It's a lot like that, just a thousand times amplified. It's like someone poured a litre of acid into my brain.”
Betty: “Do you remember anything?”
Bruce: “Just fragments. Images. There's too much noise. I can never derive anything out of it.”
Betty: “But then it's still YOU inside of it.”
Bruce: “No. No, it's not.”
Betty: “I don't know. In the cave, I really felt like it knew me. Maybe your mind is in there, it's just overcharged and can't process what's happening.”
Bruce: “I don't want to control it. I want to get rid of it.”
This motif has been at the center of our understanding of the Hulk from the very beginning. But it’s hard for us to feel sympathy for Banner because in some ways we don’t understand him. Banner doesn’t want to control the Hulk, but I think most of us think we could. Or at least we would want to try. Control the Hulk, and you get the power.
That’s certainly what Blonsky wants to do. But of course, Blonsky is evil and a bit crazy. So we don’t want that, either. And, to quote one of my teenage sons after viewing Avengers: Endgame: “I don’t want smart Hulk. Who wants smart Hulk? Smart Hulk is dumb. The Hulk is supposed to smash stuff.”
As a kid my son loved the Hulk and would wear a green Hulk t-shirt a lot. When you are little, it’s easy to understand the attraction of the Hulk’s power. There are times in life when we need to be stronger than we are. This was what the T.V. show The Incredible Hulk got right. David (Apparently, the director changed his name so it wouldn’t seem like a comic book show???) Banner hadn’t been able to save his wife when other people were able to perform miraculous feats of strength in times of trouble. He believed gamma rays were the key, and became the Hulk after exposing himself to them. In the T.V. show, Banner (played so wonderfully by Bill Bixby, R.I.P.) was able to become the Hulk (played equally well by Lou Ferrigno who gets a nice cameo as a security guard in the film) in key moments so he could use his power to save people. Banner still was on the run and trying to find a cure.
In the film, the Hulk does save Betty. That instinct makes sense. But we don’t get many other moments of the Hulk using his power to save people. In this film, Banner mostly has no control over the Hulk. And he seems mostly to fight the Abomination because, well, the Abomination sucks and who wouldn’t beat him down?
So, while The Incredible Hulk is better in a second viewing than any of us remembered, it still feels like not quite the movie we wanted. Mark Ruffalo remains the consensus best version of the Hulk, and he does shine in the later films (setting aside smart Hulk).
The Hulk is the strongest one there is. And so, he could be the greatest superhero of them all. But the monster in the Hulk always keeps that out of reach. Perhaps that’s why the perfect Hulk film has always felt just out of reach. We have high hopes and we get close, but then we are disappointed. Blonsky and Sterns get it right, I think. We want the beauty and the power of the Hulk. And we are still waiting for the film that captures all of that.
I didn't like Smart Hulk, either! I hope that we get a bit more in the MCU that moves the character in a different arc. I hear he's going to be on Disney+.
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