Ruffalo Talks Different Kind of Hulk Trilogy

7 years ago

In 2008, The Incredible Hulk was the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s second movie. Unfortunately, it was a critical and commercial failure, and it decided the fate of the Green Goliath. There would be no more solo movies for him. Okay, there’s an issue over the rights to the character, but still"¦

On the positive side, this made way for Mark Ruffalo's turn as Bruce Banner/Hulk, which started with The Avengers and quickly won over the fans.

It appears that this character's story in the MCU will culminate in Thor: Ragnarok, which will partially adapt the Planet Hulk storyline, with quite a few modifications. Or so it seemed.

During a promotional interview with Cinema Blend, Ruffalo discussed his character’s evolution. Ragnarok will bring the biggest jump in this evolution, since Hulk can now talk. He’s clearly no genius, but the fact that he can utter complete sentences is a major change after what we've seen thus far:

Hulk speaking is the start to separating of these two individuals, these identities in this split-identity person, and where that’s going to end up going. So it was really interesting to me. He’s like a baby! He’s like a five-year-old or six-year-old. So he has the same syntax, he has the same world view, and so it was fun.

But this isn't all about Hulk. The actor also revealed that he had the chance to talk with Kevin Feige about the future and learned that Ragnarok is just the beginning of a bigger Hulk storyline. There won’t be any Hulk solo movies, but we’ll most certainly see a different kind of trilogy that will end with Avengers 4:

So basically, Kevin [Feige] pulled me aside before this, and said, “If you were gonna do a…if we were going to do a standalone Hulk movie, what would it be?” And I said, “I think it should be this, this, this, and this and this, and end up like this.” And he’s like, “I love that. Why don’t we do that in the next three movies, starting with Thor 3, and then we go into Avengers 3 and 4.” And I was like, “That sounds great!” And so we are at the beginning of this arc.

The secrecy surrounding the title of the final Avengers film, combined with this new revelation, set off quite a bit of speculation about this story arc. The Leader and Abomination have both been mentioned, since their arcs haven't been resolved on the big screen. But what if the Planet Hulk adaptation is followed with a World War Hulk adaptation? What if this is the big Avengers 4 secret?