Hulk Is Always Angry (At Corporate)

Why Bruce Banner doesn't get a story.

“Dr. Banner. Now might be a really good time for you to get angry.

“That’s my secret, Captain. I’m always angry.”

That dialogue between a stiffly heroic Captain America (Chris Evans) and the schlubby, shuffling Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) is one of the most memorable exchanges in the MCU. It’s a quip, a boast, and a subtle, evocative bit of character development. For a second there, between dry quip and violence, the Hulk is the most interesting character in the Marvel universe. As Banner hulks out and crushes a giant flying dinosaur snake thing, your left wondering about what exactly goes on under that tousled hair and frumpy wardrobe. Where does his anger come from? Is the Hulk his dark other, or is all that green steroidal rage just a manifestation of something that was there all along? Who is Bruce Banner anyway?

The MCU films, unfortunately, never answer those questions. We never learn why Bruce is angry all the time. For that matter, Banner doesn’t actually seem to be that angry in the rest of the films. Ruffalo never loses his nerdish charisma, but Banner’s character flickers in and out over the MCU films, with interesting moments and ideas put forward only to be abandoned when the plot moves somewhere else.

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You could blame the writers for this, or Ruffalo himself, or MCU mastermind Kevin Feige. But none of them is really at fault. The Hulk is incoherent rather than incredible for one reason—money. Universal holds the rights to the next Hulk movie, and they’ve been unable to come to a deal with Marvel. As a result, Bruce Banner has been a secondary character in other people’s movies, and his development has, inevitably, been an afterthought. It’s a striking example of how corporate decisions can strangle creative possibilities. Ruffalo’s Banner is trapped in a green monster. But its name isn’t the Hulk. Its Contract Law.

There are a lot of examples of Banner’s patchwork plot arcs. In Thor:Ragnarok he shows up on a distant planet, having, apparently, been the Hulk for some years. How exactly he got there, why he was hulked out so long, or what that kind of extended amnesia has done to him psychologically is never explored. The the whole incident is just treated as a side gag in Thor’s more important quest to save Asgard—which is reasonable enough, since it’s Thor’s movie.

Similarly, in Infinity War, Banner loses the ability to turn into the Hulk, for reasons which are never made clear. Is the Hulk afraid to come out because he was defeated in battle by Thanos? That’s been the standard reading, but it’s not well developed in the film itself.

Then in Endgame, suddenly, Hulk and Banner have merged, so that Banner retains his mind in Hulk’s body. This is obviously supposed to be the culmination of the character’s growth process. But it’s hard to evaluate what that growth process was, or how to react to it, when it’s taken place almost entirely off screen.

Banner’s relationship with Natasha/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is handled even more clumsily. The first scene between the two of them in The Avengers, where she tries to recruit him, and he tries to scare her away, is one of the most delightful in the series—both Johansson and Ruffalo are obviously having a blast. Building on that chemistry to create a budding romance between the two of them in Age of Ultron was one of that film’s few decent ideas.

Unfortunately, after that, things bound off the rails. Banner decides he doesn’t want a relationship with Nat, and flies into space, leaving her behind. Supposedly, he does this because he’s afraid that he’ll hurt her as the Hulk (which seems condescending, inasmuch as Nat herself isn’t worried.) But if the problem is his lack of control, why aren’t he and Nat a couple in Endgame, since he’s no longer losing his mind when he goes green? Was he just never that into her? Did she decide she was pissed at him for being an over-protective jerk? Did they ever talk about it? Banner obviously still has affection for Nat given his reaction to her death, but beyond that, who knows? One of the oddest, sweetest romances in the MCU just crawls into a plot hole and disappears.

Again, this isn’t a matter of poor writing or acting or directing. It’s a straightforward problem of logistics. Feige and Ruffalo had a plot arc for Hulk over Thor:Ragnarok, Infinity War, and Endgame which was supposed to upend and explore the relationship between Hulk and Banner. But while the upending is still visible, there’s not much room for exploration when you’re not on the marquee and all the other characters who have gotten on a marquee need to get their growth experiences in. It’s not hard to set up a cute little romance between Happy and Aunt May in Spider-Man: Far From Home. But Hulk’s story is too big, and too idiosyncratic, to get shoved off to the margins. Without his own film, you can’t see the whole Hulk, but just the rubble he leaves behind.

The MCU’s inability to give the Hulk his due is a disappointment. Mark Ruffalo is a really talented and appealing actor, and he and Feige obviously had some interesting ideas to explore. More broadly, though, the failure of Hulk plotting it’s a reminder of the extent to which the stories films can tell are hedged round by arbitrary but frequently immovable corporate dictats.

Superhero stories can seem like myths, because they’re told and retold so often by so many different people, that they feel like they belong to everyone. But the fact is that those myths don’t belong to you, or me. The Hulk is owned by specific conglomerates, who negotiate specific rights to exploit him in specific ways. If someone has a story to tell that interferes with those rights, that’s just too bad for the storyteller. Corporations own our dreams. Maybe that’s why Banner is angry all the time.

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This first ran on the Escapist many years back. I’m still angry about it though, so am reprinting.