When Captain America: Civil War finally arrives, there are going to be plenty of new Avengers for us to love. We’re getting Black Panther and Spider-Man, which is awesome, but what about those forgotten ‘mightiest heroes?’ Mainly Thor or Hulk? We know Thor is lounging around in Asgard, but why no Bruce Banner? Was Hulk supposed to appear in Civil War? And if so….what the HELL happened??
Turns out… he was originally scheduled to appear once upon a time.
In their conversation with The Huffington Post, Civil War screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely discussed why the big green guy is no-showing the massive superhero showdown.
“Mark Ruffalo shot no scenes,” according to Markus. “We talked about having Bruce Banner at the very end of the film, and it just, again, seemed like we’re sticking people in just to stick them in. He has clearly gone somewhere at the end of ‘Ultron,’ and that’s a story. Don’t blow it off and put it in a little tiny chunk just to put in a little extra filigree on our movie. That’s a story.”
Don’t hold your breath to see Hulk in one of the post-credit sequences either. While McFeely said a Banner extra scene appeared in an early draft, it was eventually scrapped. So no more Banner-Stark interactions, relationship issues with Black Widow, or scraps with Ant-Man over who gets the last Coke.
It gets even worse Marvel fans, because Hulk wasn’t the only hero who got left out of the action. As it turns out, the Wasp, a.k.a. Hope Van Dyne, was also chopped from the story. With the list of names appearing in Civil War continuing to grow, the screenwriters decided to let Wasp take a break and save her story for future adventures.
“Let’s let the ‘Ant-Man’ franchise show her come to her full fruition as opposed to just doing it off-screen,” McFeely added.
While Hulk and Wasp joining the fray would bring added smiles to everyone’s faces, it’s nice to see some constraint was used in the writing process. Instead we’ll have to wait to see what happened to Hulk when he forms the Universe’s greatest tag-team when he bonds with the God of Thunder in Thor: Ragnarok. As for Van Dyne, she gets her own name on the marquee when Ant Man & The Wasp is released in 2018.
Bummed about a Hulk-free Avengers film? Lament and commiserate in the comments section below!
