Home Entertainment Joss Whedon talks about the difficulty of making a HULK movie

Joss Whedon talks about the difficulty of making a HULK movie

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Last week we brought you a rumor that had me Hulk Smashing my trousers: That Marvel was looking to do a standalone Hulk movie based on acclaimed comic story arc “Planet Hulk” that would set up a “World War Hulk” adaptation for The Avengers 3.

But according to the man who’s brought us the best version of the character thus far, it won’t be easy.

While The Avengers director, Joss Whedon, didn’t directly address the Planet Hulk rumours (his words would probably cleave the internet in twain if he did) he spoke to reporters at the Glasgow Film Festival after being asked if we would see a Hulk standalone movie being made.

“Yes. But it would be very, very hard. Hulk is a tricky son of a bitch. He’s the Claudio of superheroes. Because the problem is it’s a very popular character, but it’s not a superhero. Half of it’s a superhero, half of it’s a werewolf. And you can’t structure it like a superhero movie, you can’t light it like a superhero movie. How do you develop that? It would be extremely difficult. The one thing you would have in your favour would be Mark Ruffalo. But right now I don’t know if they have plans to do that or not, because he works so well as part of a greater whole, but by himself, it’s tough. I don’t envy the guys who went before.”

Personally I feel that both Ang Lee and Louis Letterrier’s Hulk movies did a few things right, though they both also had some missteps (Hulk Poodles? Really?!) with Whedon showing for the first time just how fun the character could be. But of course he didn’t have to build an entire movie around him.

It’s definitely going to take a director with a substantial understanding and comic book fanboy level love of the Hulk, and a deft touch when it comes to balancing character and action.

Say, Mr Whedon, now who do we know that fits that description?

Last Updated: February 27, 2013

6 Comments

  1. Brian Van Der Merwe

    February 27, 2013 at 09:49

    hulk..smash

    Reply

  2. Matthew Holliday

    February 27, 2013 at 10:16

    rumours of planet hulk and world war hulk?

    thats stretching a bit far forward dont you think, even for #3?
    still got the whole civil war to go through, thor has to blow up asgard and die, hulk actually has to be kicked from the avengers for being a mindless animal, again, and also die, and nick fury has to disapear.

    theyd also need to have introduced pretty much every character in the modern universe to pull it off.
    bringing all the marvel movies together.

    planet hulk sounds doable, but world war hulk would be a truely massive undertaking.
    the civil war seems to be a better choice if theyr gna go large on the introduction of characters.
    and much more exciting

    Reply

    • DarthofZA

      February 27, 2013 at 10:45

      They wouldn’t have to do Civil War, or having Hulk kicked off the Avengers. They wouldn’t have to have Nick disappear.
      They also wouldn’t have to bring in more heroes than those already planned (Avengers, AntMan, Guardians).
      They would be making a movie. A movie can’t flow like a comic, the different mediums are… well… too different. But they could keep the mood, the flavour of the story, and change it to fit in with what they have. Also, they could change it to fit in one movie (while, one each for planet hulk and world war hulk), and do it fine with what they have.
      Its actually the thing I’m hoping they do the most! Out of all the Hulk stories, they’re actually the two that make the most sense. Planet Hulk has a bulk of new characters that are awesome that could carry the movie, and World War Hulk, well, think Avengers. No intros, just awesomesauce.

      Reply

      • Matthew Holliday

        February 27, 2013 at 12:28

        planet hulk i think is completely doable.
        but world war hulk is on quite a different scale, requires so much context and i just dont think its very “avengers” like
        would be awesome, but i just think its one of the less doable sagas in the marvel universe, its too specific
        never finished reading it though (got a bit long winded after reading it with planet hulk and all the individual character stories all at once), so im not sure how it finished.

        plus i think the civil war is an awesome story.
        makes for an interesting thor 3, and bringing wolverine and spiderman into the avengers movies.

        also think that with antman making an appearance soon, we can expect an ultron saga sometime in the future(oh how i love me some ultron)
        in addition to the thanos teaser at the end of the first avengers movie.

        Reply

        • Kervyn Cloete

          February 27, 2013 at 15:15

          Remember these are “adaptations” not verbatim copies. So they could easily massage the details of WWH to work. Also, this would be at the end of Phase 3, by which time we’d already have introduced a fairly significant amount of heroes to go toe to green toe with Hulk.

          Civil War, Nick Fury, Asgard etc, none of these things actually have anything to do with the core story of WWH, namely, Hulk coming back to Earth to get revenge on the heroes that sent him into space (however altruistically) and inadvertently caused the death of his queen when the spaceship they sent him in blew up. That’s it. You don’t need any of that other stuff to work.

          I mean Avengers worked wonderfully as a movie, but you didn’t have to go through Hulk being a juggler in the circus for it to work, just because it appeared in the comics.

          Reply

          • DarthofZA

            February 27, 2013 at 16:33

            I wanted to reply earlier, but knew you would, and that you would do it better than I could. So thanks 😀

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