Avengers: Infinity War star Mark Ruffalo explains why the Hulk didn’t take part in the 2018 MCU blockbuster’s climactic clash.
Avengers: Infinity War‘s Mark Ruffalo recently revealed why the Hulk was cut from the Marvel Cinematic Universe epic’s final battle.
Ruffalo, who plays both Bruce Banner and his green-skinned alter-ego, discussed Infinity War‘s finale during a panel at Emerald City Comic Con 2023. “It’s been amazing fun [being part of the MCU], and really challenging and always surprising,” he said. “Even to the point where we were shooting Infinity War, and Hulk was supposed to come busting out of the Hulkbuster [armor] at the end and we shot that, we shot it four times and it wasn’t working, and we realized — well, [directors the Russo Brothers] realized — that we couldn’t have Hulk save the day again, and we had to have Banner… lose. That was the kind of thing where it was in the script one way for two years, and then when we came to shoot it, we decided it would be better if Hulk didn’t show up, and Banner had to try to make friends with him to get him to show up.”
Ruffalo’s comments come several months after the Russo Brothers admitted they “didn’t know what to do” with a character as powerful as the Hulk. According to the filmmaking siblings, this resulted in them sidelining the Hulk or otherwise diminishing his abilities in Infinity War and its direct sequel, Avengers: Endgame. This creative choice resulted in criticism from some MCU fans that the Russos “nerfed” the Hulk in both movies, a complaint that apparently doesn’t bother them.
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Depowering the Hulk wasn’t the only unorthodox choice the Russos made during production on Infinity War, either. Notably, the duo opted not to tell the cast which characters would be erased from existence during the 2018 blockbuster’s closing moments until the last possible moment. Star Elizabeth Olsen mentioned this in a recent interview, recalling how she was informed of Scarlet Witch’s demise on the same day she filmed the scene itself.
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Fortunately for Olsen, she wasn’t kept in the dark about another major plot development: the death of Vision (Paul Bettany). This didn’t make Vision’s tragic fate any easier to film, though, as Olsen found filming the visual effects-heavy scene challenging. “It’s very embarrassing shooting those kinds of things, because, like, the world depends on you doing it. And we did some improvising, which is hard to improvise those moments,” Olsen said.
Avengers: Infinity War is now streaming on Disney+.
Source: ECCC 2023, via Popverse
