While the duology of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame is among the most popular movies ever, some of its aspects have been criticized.
For example, making little and dubious use of Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo ), and especially of his alter ego, Hulk. Especially in Infinity War, where Hulk, repeatedly hyped as the strongest Avenger before, gets utterly stomped by Thanos at the very beginning, and then never appears, with Banner relegated to nearly an extra.
Though the first trailer for Infinity War teased his presence in the Hulk form during the final battle, nothing like this happened in the actual movie.
Instead, Banner fought at the battle of Wakanda wearing Tony Stark’s Hulkbuster armor and failed to accomplish much of anything. Fans of the character were understandably disappointed.
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However, as Mark Rufallo revealed during an interview at Emerald City Comic-Con that was not how the things were initially supposed to happen.
“Hulk was supposed to come busting out of the Hulkbuster at the end. I don’t know if you know that. And we shot that. We shot it four times and it wasn’t working. And then, we realized that — well, the [Russo] brothers realized — that we couldn’t have Hulk, again, save the day. That we had to have Banner lose without Hulk.”
Rufallo, however strongly defended that decision.
“And that was the kind of thing where it was in the script one way for two years, and then when we got in to shoot it, we decided it would be better for the story if Hulk doesn’t show up, and Banner has to somehow try to make friends with him. (laughs) Get him back.”
Might have worked out well – if only Endgame, you know, actually did anything with that plot point. But as the next time we see the character, he is already in the “smart Hulk” mode, with distinction between the two personalities pretty much vanished…
And, what’s worse the smart Hulk, despite theoretically combining the strength of his two halves, also remained rather ineffectual throughout the Endgame, whether in terms of superhero science of smashing things. So the complaint that the conclusion of the Infinity Saga treated him poorly still stands.
