We’re living in the Golden Age of Marvel movies and the Hulk is one of its brightest stars. Or is he? I think most fans would agree that Mark Ruffalo’s take on the character was one of the stand-out moments of the first Avengers movie. Since then, the Hulk has been stealing scenes in several superhero flicks including Thor Ragnarok and this year’s Avengers: Infinity War. But the character’s recent popularity obscures a weakness you may have forgotten. As a solo character, the Hulk can’t carry his own movie. After two very different attempts, the not-so-jolly green giant is 0 for 2 at the box office. In an age when Ant-Man can get a sequel, the Hulk is stuck in supporting character mode.

Where to start? Is it going back too far to talk about The Incredible Hulk TV show? I think it’s worth mentioning because there was a time when the Hulk was Marvel’s most high profile character outside of comic books. For decades, Marvel struggled to bring its characters to life in movies and on television. The Incredible Hulk was the only unqualified success to come out of the publisher’s many licensing agreements. Years after the show was cancelled, it was brought back in the form of TV movies which served as backdoor pilots to shows that might have featured Daredevil or Thor. The last of the TV movies, The Death of the Incredible Hulk, aired in 1990. There were plans for a follow-up that would have revived the Hulk, but those plans were scrapped due to low ratings and Bill Bixby’s failing health.

Following the success of Batman, interest in superhero movies was running sky high. But the Hulk posed a unique problem. Painting Lou Ferrigno green was okay for a hokey TV show, but would audiences accept a body builder in grease paint and a fright wig on the big screen? Probably not. Instead, the Hulk had to sit on the sidelines while characters like the Punisher who posed less technical problems got their chance at movie stardom. Gradually, Marvel started making headway with movies like Blade and X-Men and computer generated effects grew more sophisticated to a point where an actor could play a giant green monster without looking completely ridiculous.

Following the success of Spider-Man, every studio in town was looking for a chance to make a Marvel movie. The rights to the DC characters who had traditionally enjoyed success at the cineplex were tied up by Warner Brothers. But Marvel was coming out of bankruptcy and needed money. They were more than willing to part with their film rights in exchange for an infusion of cash. As a result, we got movies like The Fantastic Four, Daredevil and Ghost Rider. These less-than-stellar entries in the superhero genre risked irreparable damage to the Marvel brand. Once the company was on firmer financial footing, they started looking into forming their own studio so they could oversee the handling of their characters themselves.

Before things got to that point, Universal enlisted critically acclaimed director Ang Lee to bring the Hulk to the big screen. It was an unusual choice. Lee had impressed critics with movies like Eat Drink Man Woman and The Ice Storm, but nothing on his resume said “summer movie”. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had its share of stunning action scenes, but at its heart it was a love story. Clearly the idea in recruiting a high minded director like Lee was to elevate the material the way he had with kung fu movies.

I won’t get into the debate over whether or not Lee’s Hulk was an under-appreciated masterpiece. I can definitely appreciate his ambitious take on the character, but at the end of the day Lee’s Hulk did not deliver what his fans wanted. If you buy a ticket to a Hulk movie, you want to see the Hulk smash things. It’s right there in his catch phrase. But the biggest fight scene in Lee’s Hulk was with a giant mutant poodle and that’s just not right. Also, despite advances in CGI, the effects weren’t quite there yet in 2003.

The first Hulk movie was a disappointment, but not a disaster. It earned back most of its costs in the US and performed well overseas, but no one was in a big hurry to make a sequel. The studio dragged their feet until Marvel agreed to fund the production of another Hulk movie themselves with Universal acting as a distributor. Whether or not The Incredible Hulk can be considered a sequel to Lee’s Hulk is open to debate, but Marvel definitely tried to distance their movie from its predecessor. To that end, they recast all the parts. Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly were out. Edward Norton and Liv Tyler were in.

The Incredible Hulk was one of the first two projects fledgling Marvel Studios took on. The other was Iron Man. French director Louis Leterrier who had made the Transporter films expressed an interest in helming Iron Man, but thankfully Jon Favreau had already filled that role. Can you imagine how different things might have been if Leterrier had gotten the job? Instead, he was offered the Hulk sequel/reboot as a consolation gig.

The original script was written by Zak Penn who had previously contributed a draft for the first movie. Penn started working on his script when it was still intended as a direct follow-up to Lee’s movie. As plans changed, he worked on several different drafts to make the movie more of a reboot than a sequel. Eventually, he left the project altogether.

Enter Edward Norton. The actor had reservations about Penn’s script and requested that Marvel hire a screenwriter to do rewrites. With only two months until filming was scheduled to begin, Marvel asked Norton if he would be interested in rewriting the movie himself. Norton agreed. Mostly, his changes consisted of rewriting dialogue. He couldn’t make dramatic changes to the plot because sets were already being built based on Penn’s story. According to Tim Roth who played the movie’s villain, Norton was rewriting scenes every day on the set.

Things got contentious after Norton appeared at Comic-Con to promote the new movie. When asked about his role in the creative process, Norton claimed to have rewritten the script. Penn objected to what he perceived as the actor taking sole credit. Long story short, both men lobbied the Writer’s Guild for credit which was ultimately awarded to Penn.

But that was just the beginning of the conflicts. Norton felt that he had been promised a certain degree of creative control over the movie. When it came time to edit the film, he fought to include several of his own ideas. But Marvel wanted The Incredible Hulk to be leaner than the previous movie. They felt that Lee’s movie spent too much time building up to the Hulk and they didn’t want to repeat that mistake with their reboot. Leterrier backed Norton’s play, but when push came to shove, Marvel retained final cut and there was nothing Norton could do about it.

Well, there was one thing. After stories of the behind-the-scenes drama leaked online, Norton refused to promote the movie initially. According to Leterrier, it was an unfortunate situation with plenty of blame to go around. ”It’s as much Marvel’s fault as it is Edward’s. And my fault. It’s everybody’s fault! Or no one’s fault, in a way. I regret that [Marvel and Norton] didn’t come to an agreement where we could’ve all worked together.”

It’s hard to say who was right. The theatrical film was criticized for being too thin to be satisfying. It could have used some more character work. But unless someone releases previously unseen footage, we’ll never know if Norton’s scenes would have propped the movie up or dragged it down. In the end, The Incredible Hulk performed about as well as Lee’s Hulk. They both earned about $130 million dollars in the US and earned about another $100 million overseas. Fans generally preferred the faster-paced reboot to Lee’s ponderous take on the character, but as I alluded to earlier both movies have their fans. And both are undeniably flawed.

There were plans for a sequel. According to Norton, “The whole thing was to envision it in multiple parts. We left a lot out on purpose. [The Incredible Hulk is] definitely intended as chapter one.” All of the principals were signed on for multiple movies with the exception of Norton who had been reluctant to make the movie in the first place. When the time came to incorporate the Hulk into Marvel’s cinematic universe in The Avengers, the one thing everyone seemed to agree on was that Marvel didn’t want to work with Norton again and the feeling was mutual. Like Eric Bana before him, Norton was out and Mark Ruffalo was in.

With the popularity of Ruffalo’s take on the character, fans have been asking when the Hulk might get another shot at a solo movie. But according to Ruffalo, that’s not in the cards. Marvel has the rights to use the character, but Universal retains the rights to solo movies. This stuff is all very confusing. Seeing as how Marvel reached an agreement to share Spider-Man with Sony, you have to think they could reach a similar agreement with Universal if they were so inclined. But for now, everyone seems satisfied with the status quo.

Let’s break this down:

How many movies in the series? 2

How many of them were good? 0

Health of the franchise before it died? Off to a shaky start

Likelihood of a reboot? Not great, but you can still see the Hulk in a bunch of Marvel movies

Any redeeming value? The Incredible Hulk is watchable. It just needed to be fleshed out a little more.

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