This film is sort of the red-headed stepchild of the Avengers franchise. Not that it’s terrible – it’s not! – but it feels divorced from the rest of the series. With the exceptions of some super-soldier exposition and a brief cameo from another Marvel heavy hitter, it’s not tied into the larger threads that came together in The Avengers. When I first rewatched The Avengers after catching up on the other Phase 1 films, I was impressed by how well the films connected to each other and The Avengers, even as each stood on its own. The Incredible Hulk really isn’t like that.
A big part of this, obviously, is that the film stars a different Hulk. Before Mark Ruffalo came along, we had Edward Norton, who’s both a fine actor and a very different Bruce (I’ve already voice my love for Ruffalo’s.) Some of it’s the story and some of it’s the performance, but Bruce isn’t as compelling for me in this film as he is in The Avengers. He seems more at loose ends, reactive rather than proactive and out of control – not just of his anger, but of his life as a whole.
Like most Marvel movies, this film steps outside the usual superhero genre. Rather, it’s a fugitive piece – after a quick, dialogue-free montage of the Hulk’s origin story, the film opens on Bruce hiding out in Brazil. The military is combing the globe for him, not to put him down as a giant rage monster, but to weaponize his mutation and turn it into a standard-issue enhancement for soldiers. Being a generally nonviolent, non-murderous person when he isn’t green, Bruce isn’t keen on this idea, and the film shows him mainly concerned with three things: keeping the Hulk out of the government’s hands, searching for a cure, and angstily reconnecting with pre-Hulk colleague/flame Dr. Betty Ross.
If I hadn’t seen Ruffalo’s version (as penned by Joss Whedon,) I’d probably be fine with this Bruce. There are parts I like – his DIY scientific equipment while in hiding, and I think it’s cool that, even fleeing for his life from soldiers with a vendetta, he still does everything in his power to keep his heart rate from getting too high and unleashing the Hulk on them. Still, he feels like a weaker character. In this movie, Bruce is so often ineffectual in combating his circumstances, his pursuers, and his inner demons, and he’s a little too bland to really root for. (It’s entirely possible – and probably likely – that, had they kept Norton, he’d have excelled just as much with the fantastic writing in The Avengers, and I’d be a lot more retroactively fannish right now.)
Also, I’m fairly ignorant of the comics, so I can’t speak to its faithfulness, but it bugs me that Betty acts as a sort of Hulk whisperer. It’s cheesy to see him raging and tossing Humvees around, then be so gentle with her. It’s a little too “Peter Jackson’s King Kong” for me; I prefer to think of the Hulk as more like a werewolf. Even if Bruce isn’t entirely absent when the Hulk takes over, he’s not that “reachable” either – in the finale battle in The Avengers, after Bruce seems to have a better handle on the Hulk, he still fights mostly solo rather than teaming up with the others. The only other Avenger you is him fighting alongside is Thor, because the Hulk is volatile enough that you wouldn’t trust him with someone as breakable as a human.
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