The Real Reason Marvel Won't Give Hulk A Movie

It had been awhile since anyone actually tried bringing the Hulk to the screen, so the pressure was on for 2003's Hulk film (which came five years before Marvel's attempt at a connected universe). Directed by Ang Lee and starring Eric Bana as Bruce Banner, Hulk wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great—and if nothing else, it wasn't good enough to garner a sequel.

Fast forward five years, and the fledgling Marvel Studios was looking to take advantage of the characters still under their control to anchor new film franchises. Heavy hitters like Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men had been sold off years ago when the company was cash-strapped, so Marvel turned to the biggest names they had left: the Hulk and Iron Man.

The studio dropped Iron Man first, and thanks to the awesomeness of that movie and immense charisma of Robert Downey, Jr., it was a major hit. The Incredible Hulk was the second film on the slate, hitting a few months after Iron Man, and it was... not as good. The film received decent reviews and was a so-so performer at the box office, but compared to the coolness of Iron Man, it just didn't hold up.

Before Marvel mapped out plans for movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Infinity War, the studio was planning ahead for another Hulk film. But with the interest pushing more toward Iron Man and other characters, the project was shelved and original star Edward Norton was eventually axed and recast with Mark Ruffalo in The Avengers.

So what was the plan for the aborted sequel? Here's what Norton told GamesRadar in 2008: "To me the whole thing was to envision it in multiple parts. We left a lot out on purpose. It's definitely intended as a chapter one. You know, part of the problem with these films in general is they seem to feel the obligation to tell the origin story in a linear fashion, to deal with it first and then go on into the adventure. But a lot of great stories don't start at the beginning and with this—especially given audiences know this story—if you're going to deal with the origin you might as well deal with it artfully. My attitude was, 'Let's start with a mystery and slowly unpeel what the roots of it are, all the way through—like let's have revelations even in the third act about what set this whole thing in motion.'"

It's hard to quantify, but you don't have to look much further than the quality and success of the two standalone Hulk films against the character's appearances in the Avengers movies: he just works better as part of an ensemble. The story of Bruce Banner is a compelling one, but we've already had two attempts to dig into it with minimal success. As io9 pointed out in an excellent op-ed, doling out those story bits in smaller chunks really allows the character to truly shine. There's also the fact that the Hulk is literally a force of nature, and it's hard to line him up against a bad guy he can't just smash into bits. But the foes are always out of this world (sometimes literally) in the Avengers films, so this ultra-powerful character can still seem like an underdog when the battle royale kicks off at that scale.

Making a movie where the main character can turn into a giant green monster isn't easy, and neither is finding a way to fit all that effects work into the budget. Sure, you can keep him in Bruce Banner mode for a lot of the time, but then viewers are just biding their time waiting for him to Hulk out. It's a hard balance to strike.

The first two Hulk films did a decent job of bringing the green behemoth to life via CGI, but Marvel Studios really knocked it out of the park with The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron. They offered easily the best interpretation yet of the character, and the effort earned the first Avengers film a nomination for an Academy Award in the "Visual Effects" category. The effects team incorporated part of Mark Ruffalo's face into the character's look (just Hulk-ier), and took advantage of just about every FX advancement over the past decade.

Here's what Jeff White, ILM's visual effects supervisor for The Avengers, told Animation World Network in a 2012 interview about working on the film: "We really wanted to utilize everything we've developed the last 10 years and make it a pretty spectacular Hulk. One of the great design decisions was to incorporate Mark Ruffalo into the look of him. So much of Hulk is based on Ruffalo and his performance, not only in motion capture and on set, but down to his eyes, his teeth, and his tongue."

It's just not cheap making a movie all Hulk, all the time.

There's been a lot of confusion surrounding the film rights around the Hulk. A big part of that goes back to some comments Mark Ruffalo made to Collider blaming the fact that we never got another sequel on a rights issue: "Marvel doesn't really have the rights to that yet. That's still Universal's property, so there's that issue. That's a big impediment to moving forward with that."

Ruffalo is kind of right, but the real situation is a bit more complicated. Yes, Universal apparently does have right of first refusal to distribute a potential new Hulk film—which could create some problems, sure, but it's not a big enough roadblock to keep Marvel from making the movie. They cut deals with Sony for Spider-Man, and if they wanted to make a Hulk movie, this wouldn't stop them. But it does make the process a bit more complicated.

There are a lot of reasons for why Marvel hasn't made a new Hulk film, and though we'd obviously love to see more of Mark Ruffalo being angry, it's just a hard project to justify in the grand scheme of things. But despite the lack of a standalone project, we at least have a whole lot more Hulk action to look forward to in the fourth Avengers movie—so there will be more than enough anger to go around through at least 2019.