5 Reasons Mark Ruffalo's Hulk Should Get His Own Movie

By Percival Constantine /

3. Unexplored Characterization

For a story about a rampaging green monster, there€™s actually a lot of humanity involved in the Hulk. As a child, Bruce Banner was abused by his father and kept his anger and rage bottled up inside him. So when the gamma explosion transformed him into the Hulk, it unleashed all that rage. So with the Hulk, you basically have a scared little kid who wants to be left alone. A scared little kid who happens to be a massive behemoth who can tear apart a tank as if it were paper, but a scared little kid nonetheless. There were some attempts in Ang Lee€™s Hulk to address some of these character beats. But instead of the specter of Bruce€™s past, what we had instead was Bruce€™s estranged father torturing him in the present day. That takes away a lot of the impact that worked so well in the comics. More than that, most superheroes have a real identity and a €œmask€ they wear. For example, Peter Parker is the real guy, while Spider-Man is a mask. Batman is the real personality, while billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne is the mask. But when you€™re talking about the Hulk and Bruce Banner, there are no masks€”they€™re two separate personalities residing in one body. The movies touched on this a little bit, like Bruce referring to the Hulk as €œthe other guy€ in The Avengers, but not with any sort of depth. But this is a risky move, because you don€™t want to go too far with the melodrama and angst. That was one of the problems with the previous solo outings, and it€™s important to keep these movies human, but also fun. Exploring Bruce€™s past and the dichotomy between him and the Hulk (possibly with some help from superhuman psychiatrist Leonard Samson) could be a great way to explain just why these two act the way they do. And also, let€™s see some more of the classic animosity between the two. Bruce is constantly trying to cure himself of the Hulk in the movies, but we never see the Hulk€™s take on Banner. Let€™s get a little more into the Hulk€™s mind as well.