I saw a great theory about this, actually. The short version is Loki’s obvious scheme failed, but the hidden one succeeded: he’s now back in Asgard. He doesn’t care about ruling Earth, he wanted Asgard.
If Iron Man hadn’t interrupted Thor and Loki on that rock in the middle of the woods, Loki might well have gone back with Thor willingly.
Word. Marvel’s generally been grittier than DC; it’s DC’s heroes that tend towards non-lethality. Captain America might be Marvel’s version of Superman, with all the honor and goodness that entails, but Cap is unequivocally American, and in WW2 it was entirely American to kill Nazis.
“Huh, that tank had the nerve to shoot at me. How rude! I’ll just plink them with my rocket-pen and coolly walk away while they explode and burn to death. I AM IRON MAN, BITCHES!”
I’m not complaining, mind you.
Word of God is now that the Ang Lee film is not part of the multi-series universe that went into Avengers. The Edward Norton movie is considered the “official” Hulk movie, and its foundations were covered in flashback in the very beginning of the film. Some of the finer details were left to a companion comic miniseries, but the gist is almost the same as the old TV show: Banner was doing medical research, decided to test on himself, was an idiot and didn’t look at the output level before he turned the machine on, and Hulk consequently Smash. The main difference seems to have been that the research was specifically on anti-radiation medicine, and that Betty seems to have been in the lab and survived.
They were trying to get Norton to reprise his role for Avengers, but negotiations broke down, and he suggested Mark Ruffalo instead. I appreciate the change. Norton’s Banner was very inside-his-own-head and I don’t think he would have worked nearly as well for a group film.
I don’t remember the Ang Lee Hulk very well- but that movie (as Arabella Flynn points out) isn’t in-universe anyway.
Edward Norton’s Hulk (which despite lack of actor continuity definitely is in-universe with The Avengers) most definitely did kill people- and people who weren’t even bad guys! Even if you want to insist that the bully co-workers and the American soldiers in the bottling plant for the first Hulk-Out of the movie were only injured by all the Hulk SMASH but that they all survived. If you want to insist that all the soldiers that participated in the college campus siege, those in vehicles subjected to Hulk SMASH, were only injured but survived. Still, in dialog General Ross reports about four confirmed fatalities from Hulk run-ins- and the fatalities weren’t even all military. All deaths occured during previous Hulk-Outs prior to the start of the film. We don’t see them but I see no reason to assume General Ross is lying- the dialog comes while he is prepping his team to try to capture Banner, they wouldn’t be well prepped by misinformation (despite the fact that Ross withholds information- withheld information and misinformation are different).
I would insist that there have to have been fatalities, if not on campus, at least during the first Hulk-Out at the bottling plant.
The dialog between Coulson and Captain America annoys me when Coulson tells Cap that Banner inadvertantly created the Hulk when trying to recreate the supersoldier serum. That explanation makes it sound like the serum was Banner’s goal. In The Incredible Hulk, Ross explains to Blonsky that Banner thought he was only working on resistence to Gamma radiation and that he (Ross) “never would have told him what we were really working on.”
I really liked Norton’s Banner and was really disappointed that he wouldn’t reprise the role but ultimately the characters are really very different. I don’t think Ruffalo would have worked as the Banner in The Incredible Hulk and I don’t think Norton would have worked as the Banner in The Avengers.
Either several pages back in this Thread, or possibly in the other Avengers Thread that ran concurrent with this one when the movie first came out, I made a lengthy post explaining how I really think the characterization of Banner/Hulk is very different- going beyond the change in casting- from The Incredible Hulk to The Avengers.
Is the new Spiderman in the Avengers universe? If so will Spidey be in Avengers 2?
Our plan when Avengers 2 comes out is to rewatch all of the in-universe movies in chronological (not release) order which I believe is
Captain America
Iron Man
Hulk2
Iron Man 2
Thor
Avengers
At least that’s what a quick check reveals. It looks like Marvel, now with Disney backing, wants all its characters to come home. I have to admit feeling vaguely intrigued by the idea of, say, two or three Marvel movies a year from a single studio (or through strict arrangements with other studios) that all take place in a common universe and can have frequent character crossovers.
It is indeed extremely different. AFAICT, Norton’s Hulk movie was an Ed Norton movie guest-starring the Hulk – like most of his projects, it was a film exploring how one man reacted to the destructive impulses within himself, and how he coped with the pieces of the outside world that brought out the rage. That kind of thing requires you to spend a lot of time in the protagonist’s head, which they simply couldn’t have done in an ensemble film. Ruffalo’s version seems to have come to some sort of tentative agreement with the Other Guy, and his character interaction is with the outside world that threatens to knock him off balance. I think it works a lot better in a film where most of the point is to watch the characters bounce off each other, in some cases literally.
For bonus amusement, I went and watched a lot of the press stuff the cast did for the Avengers movie. I’m not sure I would have thought to call Ruffalo for Banner on the basis of other roles I’ve seen him in – he’s generally very good, though very different, and a knack for accents makes him difficult to recognize at times – but it makes more sense when you see him speak as himself. Banner’s slightly off-kilter sarcasm is pretty much his own personality, with the volume turned down by about half. He’s the quietest in the lineup, and only now seems to be getting over being surprised every time someone directs a question at him.
