Von Doom Fest - The Incredible Hulk

The belted by the rest time and then the rest second no months to time. Welcome back to Von Doomfest. All right, ladies and gentlemen, you've braved the days with Captain America with us, and we are, as previously mentioned in the last episode, we are on our way to Doomsday, the first appearance of doctor Victor von Doom in the MCU. And to memorialize that, we are looking at all the MCU movies, but really we're just looking at each of the major characters along the way. As I said, we did Cat, we did cover Captain America last time, and HP just had a burning desire, a need to transform, and the listeners agreed with him.

Every vote was for the Hulk. So, motherfucker, here we are. HP. Say hi to everybody you know the drill. HP smash.

I'm so excited for this, very excited. How are you doing Fathom alone? I'm all right, this is I'll just say it here, my least favorite Marvel Comics book character. Really yeah, I have it. Wow.

I have never really indulged in the comics at all. I have had spent some time because look, obviously in Marvel, all the characters crossover, all the time, so you can't really throw a brick without hitting the Hulk at a certain point and whatever your favorite title happens to be. But like sitting down and reading Incredible Hulk, I was just never interested. I am not by nature a werewolf fan. He's like my least favorite of the sort of major movie the Arkana.

When it comes to horror icons, I do not like the transformation. I do not like the idea of becoming the super thing and you aren't in control of it. That's to me, is mental. Sure, and that's fair for me. It's almost as if I didn't ever really have a choice.

Fun alone along with Spider Man, The Hulk was a really formative comic for me when I was little, because probably doing no small part to the TV adaptations of both characters. But when I was a kid, Marvel published these digest sized collections of probably the first twenty or so issues of The Hulk. I'm sure there were probably a bunch of them. But I had The Hulk and Spider Man. My mom would take me to the Danvers news Agency.

Do you remember the Danvers news agents? That it's where I bought the first the initial Dark Knight Returns. I was able to score there. Well, that's fantastic. So you know that it's really an old school newsstand, the likes of which don't really exist much anymore.

That was around though. That was also where I bought the Fangoria magazine that had printed my letter. So I remember that new stand very fondly. Sure I loved it, and I know it's still there. Like I said, I haven't been there in many years, so I'm heartened that they're still there.

But anyway, my mom would pick up these digests for me and I would read them voraciously. I still have them somewhere. I would carry them everywhere. I probably reread these things one hundred and fifty times, and so that's how I got to know the Hulk. To me, the Hulk didn't exist in a comic book at that point.

I just got these little paperback digests, and these early appearances went through the whole Rick Jones thing. Rick Jones a character that to my knowledge, has never really existed in any other form. He wasn't in the movies, he wasn't in the TV show. I actually do know that one. I do know that Rick Jones is the reason we have the Hulk because he's a dickhead who doesn't know where to park his car.

Yeah, he was the punk kid. For those who don't know he Banner. Bruce Banner was going to set off the Gamma bomb experiment and Rick Jones, being a punk kid, drove out there to be an asshole, and Banner goes out there to stop him. They can't stop the countdown, so he shoves Rick into a ditch to save him, and he's the one. Banner is the one who gets bathed in the gamma radiation that ultimately turns him into the Hulk.

But there's all sorts of weird twist and turns in the book that most people want privy to the werewolf analogy that you you mentioned earlier, that's apt because he would turn into the Hulk at night, so they would do things like they had a bunker that Rick would basically imprison Bruce in at night so that he wouldn't go out and wreak havoc and these it really is, And I do understand your point about he's like a hero against his will. It's really a sad situation for Bruce Banner because through no fault of his own, he's turning into this raging behemoth who might kill people and caused massive destruction anywhere he goes. But that's a problem, man. I do not enjoy that as an archetype. It's very scary.

So again, I think I'm a little bit pre programmed to liking it because that was my world to a degree. These comics, The Hulk and so forth, and also these digests would feature not just Jack Kirby's inimitable art style, but also artists like Steve Ditko would put their own stamp on the character. It was great for me. I loved it. One last note on the comic books problem.

Alone. Recently, in the last I think it was probably maybe two or three years ago, Marvel put out basically a series of comics called Grand Design, which was have you ever read them? Let me ask you that I've never even heard of them. So it was a series that took popular characters like The Hulk or the Fantastic Four and would retell their whole history from inception to current day, essentially as a single unified narrative. They're awesome.

They did. They covered the X Men. That was Ed piscoor who we know from hip hop family Tree. He did the X men. There was a fantastic fourth Jim Rugg did the Hulk Grand design, And one of the great things about this series is that they highlight all the essentral themes and motifs of the character that recur over the decades through different storylines and artists and so forth.

And in this case, this is more to your point, father along the cyclical nature of the Hulk is basically the constant demonization of the Hulk by all the heroes the world at large. It seems like there's every other day there's some catastrophe that's blamed on the Hulk, and no, he didn't. That's the thing sometimes, that's just part one of the sad truths about the character is that he might be trying to help somebody, but because he's this big, scary behemoth, he gets blamed for something. So it seems like there's always some catastrophe, some banishment or slim hope of cure that's taken away time and time again. It's like it's an aspirational episode of Taxi in comic book form.

It truly is. But I would encourage anybody who has even a little bit of interest in the history of the Hulk seek out Jim Ruggs's Hulk Grand Design. Any of the issues in the series are fantastic, but the Hulk is interesting in that respect because you don't think about this. It's looking at a life. The day to day stuff kind of escapes you.

But then you look at the thirty thousand foot view and you're like, wow, this is a really sad, misunderstood character. So recommendation there for the listeners. Tragic now. The Incredible Hulk appeared in issue number one of The Incredible Hulk, which was which came out in May of nineteen sixty two. As HB already told you, this was stan Lee and Jack Kirby collaboration, which basically means Jack Kirby created every fucking interesting thing about the Hulk, and stan Lee just said it was my idea, everybody.

I liked the Frankenstein monster, and so I made a Frankenstein and I combined him. With doctor Chuckle her. Yeah, he took Frankenstein and crammed him into a werewolf body. It's basically his big innovation for this. But Kirby on his own had said that he also drew a store a little story called the Hulk, and that it was all his.

So who the fuck knows except it's Jack Kirby, who just got his own street name, by the way, in Brooklyn. You see that, I saw those I. Just through social media. I saw that he was honored, and you know he deserves all the honors. Let's be honest.

Jack Kirby is basically almost single handedly responsible for comic books as we know them today. I feel about stan Lee the way I feel about Chuck Jones. I don't think Chuck Jones was. I think he was obviously a very talented animator. He did some of my favorite cartoons of all time, but my favorite cartoons, no, there's an entire studio worth of directors and writers and animators.

Then I think we're way more talented than Chuck Jones. But you know what he did, He outlived the So it was him. It was all him. And that's Stanley in a nutshell right there. He lived long enough, he outlived all of his peers, all the people who might lay some claim to these these characters in these comic books.

Not to totally denigrade his contributions, because if nothing else, he really kept Marvel going as a kind of a pt Barnum type character. No question, he was the standard bearer for Marvel Comics for his entire life. I'm not taking that away from him. I'm not taking away his even his creative his creative contributions. But it's just like we all think Stanley did everything, and really he did maybe a quarter.

Yeah, so that's a regrettable situation, has been if. The Kirby estate has been fighting that for a long time. But in some cases it feels like the producer who steps in with a tambourine during a session. He goes, oh, no, I got some get some extra money. I guess that's a pretty good comparison as well.

All right, that's so that got his going. But well, let me ask you this for the alone. Yes you weren't a fan of the comics, what was your opinion of the TV show? I fucking loved it. Of course, it was the greatest thing ever because probably what you're driving at the tragic nature of the character that was central to the TV show.

And look, I was seven, you know what I mean? Any superhero on TV was getting my attention and without any reservation, even though it wasn't my favorite character. Sure I would have liked a captain America movie, and then I didn't after I saw it, But yeah. I mean I really believed as a seven year old, I believe that Bill Bixby was transforming into the Hulk. They did enough with the prosthetics and the fact that you would see him partially transform with the contact lenses and everything else an impressionable me always.

I never It wasn't until later that I was understood that it was Lufarigno was the Hulk and Bill Bixby was David Banner. It was interesting. I don't know, I just I ate it up as a. Do you remember a time when in order to find out how movies were made and ruin the magic, you had to go do the work. It wasn't just everywhere.

It wasn't included on the copy of the movie. Here's it behind the scenes thing, and here's a commentary, I tell you everything that happens about it. So it was very easy in our childhood to be still dazzled by movies. There was no one telling us how any of the effects were doing. The effects were being made because nobody knew.

No one knew. The information we got in dribs and drabs was through newspaper articles the odd magazine piece and sin effects or fangoria or something like that. Yeah, it kind of preserved the mystery of the whole thing, and it made you be a better fan because you'd have to seek it out. It wasn't just given to you just falling out of thin air. You had to really work to find out this stuff.

I found out unfortunately, because on some Saturday morning Lufarigno was featured in some thing and I was just like, Oh, it's the Hulk, and the illusion was shattered. If the illusion ever stuck. Anyway, I do know that I did love that version of the Hulk because that sensitive Hulk thing is what you definitely got on this show. This isn't wanton destruction Hulk, which he does a lot in the comic books. Yeah, leveling entire cities basically, And there's That's thank god they had no budget and it was TV, because I wouldn't want that version of Lufa Rigno's Hulk.

He was a gentle giant. He was Frankenstein more so than he is in the comic here in the show yet. And also, let's take a moment to appreciate the both the iconic theme song to the Hulk with that piano that got the heart pumping, and the footage of him going into the machine to get Gamma raised, and then of course the sad Hulk theme, the lament or whatever at the end. I mean that I still, I mean that still takes me back to that show every time I hear either of those people. I will say the opening sequence remains exciting to this day.

Yeah, and very tempo of it. Yeah, the temp Yeah, and the images were getting and I can't wait by the time it's the show starts to see the show and then of course it's now a crashing disappointment afterwards. But as a child, nothing was going to beat it. And the end theme is the most depressing theme song of all time. This is how you send him off, and I get it.

It's thematically, it's great, But at seven or eight years old, I didn't know why I was so sad in bed. I mean, ultimately, what we were getting was berriff on the Fugitive, because you had David Banner becoming a drifter, going from town to town, just trying to mind his own business, and you had mister McGhee, the reporter, the dogged reporter who he knows that Banner is involved and he's chasing him. So that's essentially what we got. You could have taken the Gamma stuff, the superhero stuff out of it, and it would essentially be the Fugitive. So we weren't getting the superhero extravaganza that we were promised as children.

But it was enough. There was We only had with three and maybe four networks, the three major networks and one or two local networks, so it was enough for us. Do you know this show had already been greenlit and was a success, a very pretty big success for CBS at the time, and then they did those other TV movies, so they did a Doctor Strange and they did Captain America and Captain America too. Evidently the ratings for those Captain America movies were really good. But there was a regime change at CBS and the incoming people didn't want to be known as the Superhero network, so they canceled every other project, but had to keep The Hulk on because it was already a ratings winner.

It's unthinkable now because what network wouldn't kill to have a taste of that? The MCU, right, I mean, Disney Plus has it all now, but it's worth remembering that back then it was still considered kids stuff, and it was maybe considered a little bit embarts to be doing men and tights doing superhero things. It's think, but let's put it in perspective. We're talking about it took four decades before we could accept superheroes as moving characters on screen. Really.

Yeah, with the occasional Superman or Batman extravaganza. Yeah, but it remained bespectacle. It's not like we'd watch them living lives and having their own TV shows and features. It is kind of surprising that even after Superman, which kind of set the template for superhero movies for decades, that they weren't. It wasn't a bigger trend it was.

It didn't ignite the world, and all of a sudden you had, like what we have now, which is a different superhero movie. At least for a while every four or five months. It kind of came and went and did its thing, and eventually Cannon Films ran the Superman franchise into the ground. But you're right, it just it took forever for them to get the formula correct. For the public to accept it.

Don't forget that that's. True, but also don't forget that the Hulk TV series was enough of a success and was still in the public's consciousness that eventually, remember they did two TV two or three TV movies when we were in high school. Who can forget The Incredible Hulk Returns with Eric Kramer as four and then I think it was the Trial of the Incredible Hulk, which had Rex Smith as Daredevil. I mean, it's ridiculous now to. Thank HP and I did an episode on this.

I'll link it in the show notes. So everyone want to go listen to our Trial of the Incredible Hulk episode. It's pretty fun. Yeah, if you want the drill down, definitely go there. But it's impressive that it's still kind of lingered in the public consciousness to the degree that probably what fifteen years after the original show was long gone, they still kind of brought it back.

But I would argue that the Hulk was much more accepted as a superhero because he wasn't a superhero and necessary when people think superhero, they think Kate, and they think tights, and they think pirate boots, and the Hulk is just a monster. If it was not Bruce Banner, the incredible Hulk. This is our take on the Fugitive. It's just so happens to be he turns into a werewolf. It could have been as equally popular.

I mean, not a werewolf murders. People said, probably not, but maybe if I don't know, you get what I'm saying. He's a beat. He's a beast more so than a hero, and uncontrollable beast, but one with a soul. And it's not like the Hulk ever stopped and said, wait here, everyone, I'm going to knock that well done and we'll all be free.

It's not. It wasn't like Superman. Hello, Capes. No, no capes. I mean the closest he had to that were those purple pants that miraculously never never seemed to tear apart.

But no, but then Father Alone. That brings us into two thousand and three and the miraculous announcement that On Lee of all people, was set to direct Hulk the movie Hulk. You remember this, oh, of course, Eric Banna, Yeah, fresh from the set of Black Hawk Down. That's the first time I saw him in anything. Had no idea.

He was a sketch comedian and a fucking goofy human being. No idea the range that guy had, although I did remember at the end of black Hawk Down with all of that talent on display, thinking who was that one guy? Yeah, incredible range. She did that movie Chopper, which for me kind of put him on the map. He was protean in the same way that someone who wasn't afraid to bulk up for like Tom Hardy.

He was a template for what Tom Hardy eventually did. Also, but I remember being. But Tom Hardy didn't have a fucking comedy variety show where he was a goofball for a half hour every week. True. What has Eric Banna been doing recently?

He did a fantastic Australian based thriller called The Dry and I think they just made a sequel to it that was really good. I just saw him him in the film Apex. I think that's on Netflix. It's the Charlie's their Own Taron Egerton Survived thriller. He plays Charlie's thron's husband.

At the beginning, Oh interesting, I had no idea. He just he was super popular for a number of years and he was very actively working, and then it just feels like you don't really see him a whole lot these days, but it's good to hear that he's got all kinds of stuff going on. By the way, you know who I was surprised to find out was also an Australian actor, Anthony LaPaglia. Yeah, yeah, I heard that when Oh, actually I heard that from John Landis. I was at a convention at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and John Landis was there to promote Innocent Blood and just in casual conversation and Anthony Anthony's Australian, and I went, what, Yeah, he.

Did a movie that I came across. What was it? It was an Australian kind of crime thriller, romance melodrama, and it was the first movie. I don't recall the name of it, unfortunately, but it was the first time I heard him talk in his native in a native accent, and I was like, this is crazy, because he had to me. I had seen him in so many He usually played a cop, like a New York cop.

That was kind of his thing, and he was perfect. I always thought he was from Brooklyn. Yeah, amazing. Anyway, that's a little side trip there, But let me ask you, father Bloon, what did what was your opinion of the two thousand and three Hulk with on Ley directing Nicknolty too. I appreciated the attempt at breaking the screen into panels for transitions and for action sequence.

I think the final fight between the Hulk and Nick Nolty's now electric character in the Clouds is as beautiful as anything we've gotten in the twenty four years since in a superhero movie. I think Nick Nolty's great in it. I think Eric Bannett is great in it. I think they're both in the wrong movie. I think it is ponderous, and I think Onley convinced himself that this is a tragedy with some action in it, or vice versa.

I don't know. I can't quite figure it out. The tone is always all over the place. You never really get to know Bruce Banner at all, other than we get little crumbs of the childhood. But we keep getting those as flashbacks through it.

He's a cipher in this movie, which I did not understand. I thought the dog scene was ridiculous. I thought the Hulk dogs, Yeah. I thought it was precious little Hulk in a movie called Hulk. I agree.

It was certainly the first half was very ponderous because it was this It had this mature, sort of melodramatic vibe to it. But I really I remember seeing it. I went to a late show I lived at the time. The apartment I was living in right across the highway was a movie theater, and I would just sometimes go just at night, just by myself. I'd go, hey, I get nothing else to do, and I will catch a movie.

That was the Wooburn Showcase ten, where I was an usher for a few years. That's exactly right. I was living in Wuburn at the time. Anyway, I really I dug when we finally get the Hulk at the end, basically the last half of the movie, or three quarter, let's call it the last three quarters of the movie. So let's call it the last quarter of the moviel's quarter.

That's what I meant, not three quarters last quarter. But I went back and rewatched it recently, and I actually think it was a lot better than I remembered it being the action is good. They had at least the guts to show the Hulk in full daylight. When we get to the two thousand and eight iteration with Ed Norton, it suffers from the sort of everything is dark and wet. You could barely see the Hulk in a lot of the scenes.

It's like they're trying to hide him. But at least in this one, though, the effects certainly aren't up to scratch for today. For the time, I thought they were very good, and there's some interesting action bits. There's a sequence where he's squaring off against two or three tanks, which is really good. And here's what I have to say about that one scene, because I got so excited.

I think the entire theater got so hyped when he ripped the turret off of the one tank and then he starts pounding the barrel of it in his hand like a fucking bat, and everyone was like, oh shit, what's he gonna do? And then he throws it away. Time out for one second. Yeah, I'm sorry, reporting what's up? Yeah, sorry, I'll be I'm sorry.

Oh I got a pee. That's okay, right, I'm back. I Madeline went to a few works for this camp over the summer and they had a night where she scooped ice cream and it was like one of these sort of events for the people involved in the camp. Anyway, she wanted to bring up the speed right now, all right, So we were talking about, oh, yeah, you talk about the baseball bat thing and. Yeah, and then he tosses the fucking barrel.

He tosses this weapon away, and I was like, oh, and then he just kind of bangs on the tank a little bit more and then he's off and jumping, because this is a hopping hulk. But I appreciated that because those early comics, that's how he that's how he got around. He would leap from place to place. So I kind of dug. That for local motion.

Here's what I'll say about the rest of them. Here I'll say about the rest of that movie. This is one of my favorite lines of all time. Turned it into a parking lot. Oh, Sam Elliott, your parking lot's ready, General.

And that was bizarre because it's they're in the middle of these rock formations in the desert and he's basically saying, yeah, I get rid of that monument. We don't need that. Yeah, basically, john Ford's monument Valley just leveled because he wants to. He wants to capture one green Man. You know.

But some of those surprisingly, some of those effects I think still do kind of hold up. And I love that sequence at the end where he's fighting his father who's turned into pure electricity. So there's a lot to it's ultimately failed experiment, but at least it kept the Hulk in the public consciousness in an interesting way. Midnight viewers, This is a visual joke I'm doing just for hp best part of the movie. Man, what a choice.

I'm talking about Nick Nolty when he's sitting in the chair and he starts calling Eric Man a baby basically, and he starts flailing his arms up and down. Oh my god, it's the Nicknolty experience that you sign up for. By the way, you see his look in that movie, and at the time he got arrested for drunk driving and he looked exactly like that, And when everyone saw the mugshot, they were like, what the fuck is wrong with Nick Nolty. As it turns out, he was making a movie, you assholes. He was in makeup, his hair was all messed up because that was the character.

Yeah, I mean it was silly in retrospect, but no, you end up liking it better than I remember liking it, so it was good. Actually that's not true. That's disingenuous. I enjoyed it when I saw it for the first time, and I thought it held up pretty good. I do think that last quarter of the movie is definitely worth watching.

Yeah, for sure. And for those who don't want to invest the time, all that stuff is up on YouTube, those scenes in particular, so if you if you don't want to go through the whole movie, then check it out all lak cart. I am not linking it in the show notes. Go do your own home. Yeah, man, what are you here for your own legwork?

So that'd be the end of the Hulk for six long years, But then, oh boy, Marvel's making their own studio. Now it's the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We got to get the Avengers on screen as quickly as possible, get them out there, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and of course the Hulk. Interesting choices continue. Edward Norton suddenly decides he wants to play the Hulk.

What'd you think of Edward Norton as well? Bruce Robert Bruce Banner. It's interesting depending on what interview you read that there's some conjecture that the director of that movie, Lewis Letterrier wanted Mark Ruffalo from the start, but apparently Marvel was pushing for a bigger name, so they went with ed Norton. That's just because there's this like a lot of conjecture around why they replaced ed Norton with Mark Ruffalo, which we'll get to for me. Oh, we know why, because Edward Norton is probably sucker behind the scenes.

Yeah, and was heavily involved with the editing and making it his movie. That we saw it happen with American History X right. Yeah, and there's a pattern at play. I to be really honest, and this is a kind of a roundabout way of answering your question alone, I didn't love the Incredible Hulk movie that that movie from two thousand and eight. It was obviously a very clear attempt to translate the TV show into a movie, because I mean the credits, my god, they reference they directly reference the credits from the TV show.

And it's the same character who's going in this case. He's searching for a cure, but he's going from place to place. He's making everywhere he goes better, right, exactly just like doctor Richard Kimball. And as the movie begins when he's at a Brazilian favella, he's working at a bottling plant and doing all these things to try and keep his aggression down. Anyway, he's okay.

I to me, Norton doesn't really put a big stamp on the character. I think the character is just they are going through the motions of what you would expect Banner to go through. But to me, it didn't really have any panache to it. He just it was like a little bit paint by numbers. What did you think?

I felt like we needed to have ed Norton's origin story, even though we all know that origin story. We needed to see that guy become the Hulk. We got the guy already suppressing the Hulk, and he doesn't even need too much in the movie. I wanted to see more of a war between Bruce Banner and his alter ego. I agree, but it just felt dry and flavorless.

They just kind of go through the motions of what you would think of a Hulk movie would provide, but no one really It just was okay. It wasn't exciting. It didn't take any chances either. Well here's what I noticed when I was watching it, that stark tech showed up at one point with the they have these audio cannons that they're shooting at, and that was all Stark industry stuff, and that got me excited because it was real, all of a sudden, they were going to start cross pollinating these films. I think that the sequence that I'm describing where they're hitting them with the sonic cannons, that whole action sequence I really enjoyed.

I'm going to say all the action scenes are actually really good. I loved the fight in Harlem as a matter of fact, and it got really gothic up there. I mean, they really returned to the Frankenstein origins with this on top of this cathedral like structure. I thought that was all very beautiful. So I liked all the action in it.

I loved Tim Roth as Emil Blonski, and I really like the Abomination. I mean, he's now looks exactly like the Abomination was supposed to look from the get go, which is kind of fishy, But this one I thought was scary and a good foil for the Hulk in this movie. I didn't really I love Tim Roth. Let me just preface what I'm about to say by saying, but I just didn't buy him as this badass commando type who's eager to go toe to toe with the Hulk. The Abomination stuff is good, and it's as far as pixels fighting other pixels, it was fine.

I didn't think. That's every fucking movie in the MCU. You can't say that. Can't dismiss this movie because you were watching a cartoon for a little while. That's the entire end of The Avengers.

But it's what I said. It's everything is in darkness and wet to cover up the artificiality of the computer graphic. This movie suffers greatly from that. But what I think is more intriguing about this movie, if nothing else, is they were, at least at the time, they were planning on making this more than just one movie, because there's a lot of stuff that never ever pays off in subsequent movies. Ty Burrell, who is one of my favorites because I think Modern Family is one of the greatest sitcoms ever made, okay, and he's a big part of that.

He is in The Incredible Hulk. He plays a psychology just who is effectively Betty Ross's boyfriend in Bruce's absence. His character's name is Doctor Leonard Sampson. Doctor Sampson was a prominent character in the comic book. He's another guy who he at some point Bruce was being They siphoned off gamma radiation from Bruce in an attempt to save his life, and Doc Samson absorbed that extra radiation and he becomes a beefcakey type of character with he's not green, but he has green hair, long flowing hair, kind of looks like Fabio.

A little bit my kind of guy. But what I think is intriguing is that's the character that in essence Ty Burrell is playing in this movie. So it makes me wonder were they planning on making him into Doc Samson sometime down the road. Probably not, but it's a very interesting what if to think, what if ty Burrell was somehow part of the MCU in this way. Martin Star is a student in this and he's playing Amadeus Chow.

They don't pay that off either. I suspect some of this will be surprises for when we get Doomsday's Slash Secret War. I'd be surprised that it didn't start to pay off some of these. And in any way would they not also in chopping off all the timelines and variants. Bring back Edward Norton.

Bring back that would be really cool. Bring back Eric Banna saw the Bruce is That would be incredible. Not no pun intend or pun intended, but yeah, I would be really cool. So anyway, an incredible Hulk movie, the two, the one from Away we're talking about here. There's a lot of interesting things at play, But to me, it just felt, I don't know, it just didn't really excite me.

I don't know. I wanted to like it because I like the character, but it just left me. Flat Well, I can't argue with flat man. Moving on, although, let's mention the end of the movie that got deleted, which is Bruce goes to the Arctic to kill himself and when he tries to do, the Hulk like spits the bullet back out. He tells the story in the Avengers movie, right, but it was actually filmed with ed Norton and the Hulk smashing the ice apart was going to dislodge the plane that held Captain America.

That would have actually improved my estimation of the movie if they could have linked that up, because that makes sense, right, and that gives you that link between Cap and the Hulk. It does. But you know what, I'm glad they didn't because I love the opening of First Avenger where it's all Raiders of the Lost Dark and the Arctic, where you find the edge of this kind. Of stuff exactly. So then that brings us too, well, it really brings us to the Avengers.

It brings us to Mark Ruffalo. Right absolutely. And now, thanks to Universal holding onto the rights to the Hulk as long and as hard as they could, we're not going to get a Hulk solo movie. I think they can do one now, I think the rights are finally up. But to work around that though, I mean, they were clever in that they can't give him his own movie, but he can be a sidekick in another movie, and that obviously is for Ragnarok right there, which is still remains one of my favorite MCU movies.

I think it's brilliant. I think he is the perfect foil for Thor the whole. I love the fact that they took the Planet Hulk storyline and transpose that here. I loved the Hulk in this. I love Mark Ruffalo in this.

I think he's a fantastic actor. He's a great comic actor and he played off of each other beautifully. Ahead, we've reached the end of the actors who have now live action played the Hulk with Mark Ruffalo, So let's rank them, shall we. We don't need to put him in order, just give me. There was only five.

I guess we could put him in here. But who worst the best? Bruce Banner, not Hulk? Okay, so just Bruce Banner. The worst for me is Ed Norton because I just found this performance lacking wow.

By process of elimination, I'm going to put ed Norton on the bottom as well. And in fairness, he didn't really have a lot of time to put his stamp on the character because he only had that one shot at the opportunity, So it's not necessarily his fault that he only got one time to do it, but he didn't wow me. So yeah, he's on the bottom. I would say probably from there it would be what Luf Forigno? No, just Bruce Banner.

Oh, I'm sorry, I meant Bill bigspe Excuse. Me, Ah, they're so interchangeable. Yeah. I would put Bill Bixby there too, because it's a version of the character and he's playing him very well. But really, that's not Bruce Banner.

It's not it's not. In fact, it's not it's David Banner. Because I think we talked about this. They didn't like the connotation of Bruce Banner. They thought the name sounded effeminate at.

The time they said gay. They said gay. So instead of it being Bruce Banner, which is the classic comic book alliteration, like Lois Lane, they went with David Banner, which. Is ridiculous because Bruce Banner's actual name is Robert, his middle name Bruce. They call him Robert.

Bob Banner, although that sounds kind of goofy. But why make up a third I just want to point out before we move on from that conversation that the reason his name is Robert Bruce Banner is because stan Lee in one of the issues of Incredible Hulk called him Robert in one issue and it had been Bruce, and then the fans freaked out and he said, oh no, his name is Robert Bruce Banner. But it was an actual mistake. It was a lack of continuity on his part. So anyway, it would be well, it's only really three, right, So we put ed Norton on the bottom, we have Bill bigspe no disrespect, and then Mark Ruffalo.

He's clearly Oh then Eric Banner, Oh you're. Right then okay, then I want to recalibrate. I put Eric Banner below Bill Bigsby. I guess, because as you said, he's a cipher and he doesn't really have a lot of Actually, you know what, maybe put him ahead of Bill Bigsby. Yeah, here's the thing.

I didn't like the characterization or lack of in his movie, but not for his lack of performance. I thought he did great with what he was given. It's fair. So do you know that when they made that movie they didn't even let him motion capture because ang Lee wanted to do all of the Hulk action himself. I didn't know that, ye, And when I said it out loud now, it just occurred to me.

That's why he probably decided to do the movie, because he thought, oh, I can do this, it'll be fun. I could be Hulk and it's this new technology and blah blah blah. Sure sure, so yeah, I think probably the best is clearly Mark Ruffalo. Just below that is Eric Banna, Bill Bixby, and then Ed Norton at the bottom Yeah. Last again, that's another very relevant current reference for our listeners, the Honeymooners.

Yeah, world, so what our listeners are our age, So I'm not that concerned about it. Can I bring up one thing that kind of bugged me? If we were talking about Infinity War, Endgame and the Hulk within those two movies. Of course, let's we auditioning it out. We're talking all across what we liked and didn't like across the board.

So in Infinity War, they set up this notion that the Hulk has been so humiliated and scared of Fanos because he got his ass kicked, that he's too scared for the duration of Infinity War to come out and fight. It's this battle where you know, as much as Mark Ruffalo Bruce Banner tries to get him to come out, he won't, which leads Bruce to have to use the Hulkbuster armor in the climactic fight scene. Right, that never really pays off because by the time we get to Endgame, he talks about how he had this sort of thing where he came to terms with the Hulk and he merged the two personalities. But there's no I was anticipating in the final battle that final redemption for the Hulk. He doesn't have to kill Thanos, but he can at least get a few good licks in to get revenge for being so humiliated in that first battle, and just for in general, for getting back to Thanos for everything he did.

But we don't get that. I agree with you one. There is no conversation going on between the Hulk and Bruce. There's just Hulks no every time he tries to change, and we never get the Hulk to come out for any reason, even if he came out and was really bad at the job. Now, at least we've gotten some justification other than he got his ass beat by Thanos.

He's gotten his ass beat before. He didn't get his legs ripped off or anything. I mean, maybe he feels bad that he wasn't able to save Loki, but who would. Yeah, at least, I mean, Thor gets his revenge on Thanos in the second movie for not having killed him, not going for the head so to speak, in the first movie. So I just don't understand why Hulk didn't.

I mean, I guess Hulk was incapacitated from having done the first snap that put everything back in motion. But I don't know. That always kind of rankled me a little bit. Well, wait, didn't he was at the end of fucking Ultron. He takes off in the Quinn jet, right, Yes, so then we don't leave and we don't see him again until thora Ragnarok.

Correct when he's on the car. And then so that's when we deal with Thor all of his buddies in their ship. By the way, this has nothing to do with anything, but I liked that when in Infinity War, when Thanos's ship is attacking the the Asgardians, the voice calling out for help is Kenneth Brana, who directed the first Thor movie. Yeah, I read that too. Yeah, that's great.

Who says By the way, I've read recent interviews he said he'd love to come back and do another Thor. They should let him now that everyone knows the rules, because I liked that for the first Thor movie. Well, but it was Love and Thunder was so monumentally disappointing for me and probably for a lot of people that I think as much as Taiko Watiti, his direction and his overall his asthetic worked in Ragnarok, it just landed with a thud in Love and Thunder, and it was clear that he kind of figured, well, we can improve this and maybe do Lucy Goosey and just as good. It was not just as good. So this is the time, I think to get back to basics and get Branda another shot.

That movie had Gore the god Killer in it. It's if he's there, you're not making a comedy. If you're going to make that story, then make it the fucking tragedy. It is so but we'll get into that in more detailed when we cover Thor of course, but I was wondering why they didn't really connect the whole Hulking. Not to say I loved the Hulk and Endgame.

I loved smart Hulk. He was amusing and he but he was tough. He even when he went back they went back to the battle in New York and they were like, all right, he's embarrassed. Yeah, I love that. And Mark Ruffles, Yeah, he's such a good comic actor that I believe it.

I don't know. He worked so well as Bruce Banner. I think it's great casting. Well, we've said it in cap I think we're going to say it a lot. Actually, it's rare that they don't get the right person for the role for the MCU, everyone seems dead solid perfect.

I believe Mark Ruffalo as wildly intelligent Bruce Banner, and I believe all of his motion capture shit is the fucking Hulk man. Yeah, and he looks the Hulk looks like him. I love the fact that you can still it's not so much in the Ed Norton movie. You can't. There's no mistaking Mark Ruffalo is the Hulk in those movies, but you can't really see Ed Norton.

I don't think in that the Little Terrier movie. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I just don't see it, but I don't see the resemblance. Well, what's funny is the the Hulk in Hulk actually looks like Eric Banner as well, so I think they tried a little bit, but they gave him this long hair that Bruce didn't have. So you've already got a disconnect. And then we're just trying to find Ed Norton's features in there.

It's too much to ask. Yeah, no, I agree, but no, I mean you don't love the character that you made, that clear, but you do have some affection for Mark Ruffalo's interpretation. That's cool. Oh, absolutely, Hulk in the MCU I've been down with from go. I mean, what reservations I had with each of the films, the Eric Banna one and the Ed Norton one didn't.

It only added my estimation of the character and what it can be visually on screen, and I think that's where it should live and breathe. Sure, that's it. I guess I think we've covered it. I think we did. That was remarkably easy.

That was smooth sailing. Oh my god, I guess we've reached the end. Gamma radiated ourselves to the end of the podcast HP and that's going to be this that's going to be the end of this particular Von doom Fest. But in I guess two weeks time, y'all, unless you go on the Patreon channel half up some we're going to be covering. Who are we covering next?

I don't know. I don't know. I'm not trusting the viewers this time. No, you didn't like that we did the Hulk. Now, well, now that we got it out of the way and it was painless, Yeah, I enjoyed it, and now I look forward to other characters coming down the pike.

Well, we already mentioned him. Do you want to do thor not? Really? Okay, do you want to do Spider Man? That's so tempting, Let's save that.

That's a real treat, like that's Yeah, every version of Spy Man I've enjoyed, honestly. Wells, who else do we have to choose? From here? We maymore. No Fantastic Four we could touch on.

Let's do Fantastic four or now? Yeah, let's do it now because I don't want to do it when we get it as close to Doomsday because obviously Doom is a Fantastic Four villain. Yeah, let's tackle them. They've got a pretty rich history live action wise. Yeah, which we've already covered some of that in other episodes.

Right, yeah, but I won't link that in this show. I'll link it in that show. There you go, perfect And until that next. Show, HP, Where can people find You? I co host The Night Mister Walters the Taxi podcast alongside The good Father here and I host the Noise Junkies music podcast.

And finally, I have a bandcampsite hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. As for me, you're listening to it midnight viewing. It's on twice a week, every Friday's Father Malone's Weekly round Up every Monday is either a fest like this one, or an examination of an anthology horror television series which Mike White and I are currently wrapping up our final episode of Hammer House of Horror. Onward we Go. We're looking down the road to Roll Dolls Tales of the Unexpected.

We've already got the first couple of episodes in the can. Those are on the Patreon channel. You can find all that stuff Patreon dot com, slash father Blone If you want to write to me specifically Father Blone seven to one at to gmail dot com. I'll also throw the link tree in there so you can find all of my other crazy shit. Go to Instagram, folks, because that's where I post all these crazy animated things featuring cartoon me and HP.

And until next time, everyone, try to enjoy the Daylight Hulk Smash and