Everything We Know About The New Hulk MCU Trilogy

If you're wondering why the Hulk's arc is taking place in team-up pictures and other heroes' movies instead of a standalone film, it's the same reason we're not likely to see Wolverine show up for Infinity War: rights issues. During the press tour for Avengers: Age of Ultron, Mark Ruffalo mentioned that while they can certainly use the character, Marvel Studios can't make a movie that puts his name in the title. Those rights still belong to Universal... for now.

But at the same time, it also raises the question of whether they'd actually want to. There have already been two Hulk movies, and despite the fact that they were building off a character that had way more recognition than, say, Iron Man did before the launch of those movies — and who was infinitely more popular than surprise hits like Star-Lord and Rocket Raccoon — neither of them really set the world on fire.

Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk movie was, to put it nicely, a bit of a mess, and despite pulling off some pretty interesting visuals that played with comic book-style panel layouts (and having the Hulk punch out Hulk-Dogs, which was hilarious), it's also a movie that ends with a giant CGI monster having a fistfight with a cloud. 2008's Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton, was equally messy, a half-reboot, half-sequel that, despite being the second film in Marvel's shared universe, is also the one that nobody really remembers or talks about.

With two lackluster features and two ensemble movies in which he provided some of the best parts, it's easy to reason that the Hulk might just work better in the context of stories that feature other heroes — especially if there's legal red tape that's preventing another starring role anyway.

That's not to say that there aren't great solo Hulk stories in the comics that the filmmakers could draw from, though, because there are plenty. That said, it's also true that some of the most memorable moments in the history of the character come from stories where he's either pitted against other heroes, or where he gets really, really weird. Seriously: that dude has been a Conan-style barbarian king twice, on two different planets, and those stories are generally regarded as some of the best Hulk tales of all time.

Which brings us back around to Ragnarok.

The second part of the trilogy came with Avengers: Infinity War. In Ragnarok, Banner was worried that turning into the Hulk again would leave him permanently transformed, but after suffering a brutal defeat at the hands of Thanos in Infinity War's opening scene, he was faced with the opposite problem. No matter how mad Banner got, the Hulk refused to come out.

One of the cooler results of that problem was that we got to see Banner in action, ironically suiting up in Iron Man's massive Hulkbuster armor in order to take on the Black Order. It also gave us a better look at Banner's relationship to the Hulk than we'd ever seen in the MCU — they were presented as two separate characters occupying the same body, frustrating each other and even arguing. The big question, though, is just why the Hulk refused to, well, Hulk up at all.

The simple answer is that he's afraid, but according to co-director Joe Russo, Hulk's real reason for sitting out most of the fight against Thanos is a little more nuanced. "People speculated whether there was some fear on the Hulk's part about having to face Thanos again," he mused on the Infinity War commentary track. "But I think ultimately it's that he's tired of playing hero to Bruce Banner."

If you want to get even more complicated, however, there's yet another possible reason for Hulk's reluctance to jump into the fight.

Obviously, whatever happens next for the Hulk has more to do with how the sequel to Infinity War shakes out than anything else, including who manages to make it back to the land of the living. That said, the Banner/Hulk conflict is almost certainly going to be at the center of the next piece of the story. With that in mind, if they want to follow up on the events of Thor: Ragnarok, a story based on Planet Hulk, then there's one obvious choice. In the comics, the events of that story led directly to World War Hulk, in which the Hulk returned from Sakaar and beat the living hell out of... well, everyone.

It's an idea that sells itself, but there's a problem with using it as the basis for a movie at this point. Mainly that it just doesn't work with what we've seen so far.

Here's your spoiler warning for both the comics and the movies they influenced: the conflict of World War Hulk is set up when the planet Sakaar is destroyed, and the Hulk blames the secret cabal of heroes who shipped him off to space to begin with. In the movies, however, Hulk isn't tricked — he boards the Quinjet himself, and even continues his escape from Earth when Black Widow tries to bring him back. Besides, while the Hulk seemed to be living a pretty comfortable life on Sakaar, there's no real indication by the end of Ragnarok that he misses it — and even if he does, the movie's version isn't destroyed at the end.

Having the Hulk get mad at the Avengers (and Banner) for dragging him back to Earth and into their own conflicts rather than leaving him alone could be a really good way to invert that setup and get some conflict out of it, but again, it's not what the movies seem to be leading to. Unless... Unless...

Spoiler warning again: Toward the end of Ragnarok, once Thor has successfully returned Bruce Banner to his human form after two long years as a gamma-powered brute, the movie makes a big deal about how if he turns again, he may not ever be able to revert back to being Bruce Banner. Needless to say, this happens about 4.3 seconds before Banner turns back into the Hulk, presumably dooming himself to a permanent life as a monster who can't keep a pair of pants intact — and in Infinity War, of course, he has the opposite problem.

But what if all this is meant to set up an attempt to "cure" banner by separating him from the Hulk once and for all? It's something that's been done in the comics more than a few times, and given what happened with Tony Stark's last attempt at fixing a major problem, having that kind of experiment go tragically wrong would fit right in with the rest of the universe. From a filmmaking standpoint, there's an even bigger benefit, too: if you separate the Hulk from Bruce Banner, you actually give Mark Ruffalo something to do.

Don't get it wrong, Ruffalo's great as the Hulk, but playing a giant computer-generated monster with a limited vocabulary and exactly one emotion is a little limiting. It's when he's Banner that he really gets the chance to shine as an actor, and the bits and pieces that we see of Banner as a human, struggling with his anger and solving problems with his brain rather than his fists, are an underrated part of the MCU saga.

While he serves as a two-fisted brick on the team, Hulk's entire deal as a solo character revolves around a person dealing with himself. Separating them would help to underline that, and a purely raging Hulk would certainly provide a cinematic challenge. And, just like it has in the comics, recombining the two halves could give us a Hulk with Banner's brain, something that could work as a pretty interesting change for the next phase of movies, after years of seeing the big green brute in action.