The Incredible Hulk is one of the lesser-beloved Marvel movies from the beginning of the MCU. It came right after Iron Man, which was a real change in how moviegoers saw superhero movies. Iron Man was funny, ambitious, and full of an energy that made people excited to see what was next. The Incredible Hulk took a more serious tone, which ended up being the right route for superhero films like The Dark Knight over at DC, but it wasn’t what Marvel fans were hungry for, and it didn’t work at the time.
But the film’s director, Louis Leterrier, who had previously directed the first two Transporter movies, and went on to direct Now You See Me, episodes of the series Lupin, and this year’s Fast X, defends the tone of the film and its star, Edward Norton, who fought for it.
In a recent interview on the new Happy Sad Confused podcast spinoff series Watchalong (via Variety), Leterrier said:
“The whole way, everybody was in lock step. It just got tense at the end. The end, it was very tense about the tone and the level of humor. Although Edward is very funny, all his friends are comedians and he is an extremely funny guy, he was very right in defending the seriousness of the movie. You have to remember, the mid-2010s…’The Dark Knight’ had such an impact on superhero movies.”
Norton’s fight over the film’s tone wasn’t the only tension taking place. Leterrier remembered clashing on set with actor William Hurt, who starred as Thaddeus Ross.
“William Hurt didn’t want the mustache to act him out. The size of the mustache was a discussion. But sometimes he and I clashed. You have two types of actors. You got your partners, your best friends that you have to cajole all day, and then the people who like to have these arguments. They feed off that. That’s how he worked. One day he was screaming at me, ‘You don’t know anything about actors!’ Too bad for him he was in the giant helicopter at the end and I was at the control. He was like, ‘You have to find the button to the nuclear plant…’ I took the joystick and shook him and he fell and looked at me and was like, ‘I like you!’ That was it. He just wanted to have a little bit of a fight.”
That sounds obnoxious, but that seems right on par for William Hurt. The actor passed away in 2022, but the character of Thaddeus Ross is returning to the MCU in Captain America: Brave New World and will be played by Harrison Ford.
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