For some time, we’ve known that the next time we’ll see Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is within Thor: Ragnarok, the upcoming third standalone Thor movie. Mark Ruffalo himself has been dropping little tidbits about his involvement over the past few weeks, which has led a number of outlets to go digging for details. Which means that we’re about to talk about some details. Which can only mean one thing…
Potential Spoilers Below
According to Dave Gonzalez over at Geek.com, Hulk comes into play in a way that will make fans of the character’s Planet Hulk comic run very happy:
According to our sources, after Thor catches on to Hela and Loki’s (still mysterious) plot that is going down in Asgard, Hela destroys Mjolnir, and banishes Thor from Asgard (which we covered here). Loki and Hela’s plan involves the major arc of the Marvel Universe, and just when it looks like Thor is about to put a stop to it, he gets banished — but not to any old planet. He ends up on a gladiatorial planet where his head is shaved and he’s forced to fight for his life. Let’s call this planet Sakaar, like it was in the comic books.
Thor knows that he has to get to some MacGuffin weapon object to defeat Hela and Loki (could this be the Infinity Gauntlet that Thanos is in possession of, or maybe an assemblage of Infinity Stones?) and he has to get off the planet. Thor runs through all of his alien opponents in gladiatorial combat, even without his trademark hammer. Finally, Thor has to face the current champion of the arena, and wouldn’t you know who that ends up being? The Hulk.
Gonzalez prefaces this whole thing by reminding us that Thor: Ragnarok is still in the re-writes phase of scripting, which means that a lot of this could change. The original rumblings from the production were that this was set to become one of the darkest Marvel movies yet. Then they brought in director Taika Waititi, who said as recently as this week (while at Sundance with his new film Hunt for the Wilderpeople) that he will be adding some levity to the Norse apocalypse. So there’s plenty of time and room for changes.
Let’s assume for a moment that this is exactly what will happen in the movie. It sounds fantastic. Even if we don’t get to see all of the backstory that leads Hulk to this battle planet, a sequence on a battle planet that involves an armored Hulk would be a lot of fun. Whether or not there’s an entire movie to be mined out of Greg Pak’s Planet Hulk comic storyline is another question entirely, though based on the Geek.com report, it’s something that Marvel may have been thinking about:
The rumor was that Marvel was planning to weave the character through the Avengers “Phases” in a creative way, banishing the Hulk from Earth after Avengers 2, spinning off into his own Planet Hulkmovie (based on the Greg Pak comics storyline of the same name) and returning him to Earth in Phase Three in some sort of World War Hulk(also a comic book storyline) Avengers movie. The specifics of that arc were outright denied by Marvel staff over and over again, leading up to Joss Whedon’s follow-up (Avengers: Age of Ultron) and after the Hulk mysteriously steals a Quinjet and disappears at the end of that movie.
Weaving a version of Planet Hulk into Thor: Ragnarok might be a happy medium. It subverts the rights issues that Marvel has with Universal Pictures, gives a little fan service to one of the better Hulk comic stories and keeps the momentum toward chasing Infinity Wars going in the right direction.
With Avengers: Age of Ultron, there’s been a growing concern that Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is churning out movies that are too crowded. In fact, it’s easy to see how a movie like Ant-Man worked better by keeping things simple. And with the rumors that Avengers: Infinity War will include upwards of 67 characters, the MCU is becoming more claustrophobic by the minute. This rumor about Thor: Ragnarok represents the best version of this cluttering. It’s the pairing of two characters that work well together on screen and a hybridization of a few storylines from the comics that will delight fans. It’s something I hope they’re able to pull off, as it could play out fantastically on-screen.
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