10 Awesome Ideas That Were Cut From The MCU

4. A Christopher Nolan-Style The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk Edward Norton
Universal Pictures

It's a forgotten detail these days, but on top of being its lead actor, Edward Norton actually did some writing on The Incredible Hulk, and was reportedly still tweaking the script in the middle of principal photography.

He envisioned the film as a serious, grounded story in the vein of then-recent reboots like Batman Begins and Casino Royale, declaring that his goal for the project was to make it like "what Chris Nolan had done with Batman".

Marvel Studios initially seemed enthusiastic about Norton's take, but as the film inched closer to release, the actor realised that he wasn't on the same page as everyone else. This resulted in The Incredible Hulk being a much more standard popcorn flick than the cerebral blockbuster he wanted to make:

"I loved the Hulk comics. I believed they were very mythic. And what Chris Nolan had done with Batman was going down a path that I aligned with: long, dark and serious. If there was ever a thing that I thought had that in it, it was the Hulk. It’s literally the Promethean myth. And they [Marvel] were like, ‘That’s what we want!’ As it turned out, that wasn’t what they wanted."

Though it's probably tough to do a gritty, Nolan-style movie when your lead character can turn into a giant green bodybuilder, the idea of a more thoughtful Incredible Hulk flick sounds fascinating - though perhaps a little risky for the MCU's second project.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!