Though a solo movie featuring Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner is unlikely to ever happen (blame the underlying red tape between Marvel and Universal for that one), later this year, writer-director Taika Waititi will deliver the next best thing by incorporating elements of the beloved Planet Hulk comic book arc into Thor: Ragnarok.
Last seen drifting off into the sunset during the finale of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ruffalo’s on-screen Avenger can now string a sentence together, and has not transformed back into Bruce Banner from the best part of two years. That all changes once Chris Hemsworth’s God of Thunder arrives on Sakaar though, and we know that the last act of Ragnarok will help set the stage for the oncoming Avengers: Infinity War ahead of its own release in May of next year.
But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, Taika Waititi spoke to IGN about the ways in which Planet Hulk’s key story beats are woven into Ragnarok.
We knew that we wanted Hulk to have been Hulk for about two years, so he was trapped on this planet. I’m always fascinated by the duality of Hulk and Banner and how their brains could be interconnected and could we see Hulk and have a bit of Banner’s voice in there? Could we have Banner and kind of see Hulk’s personality through there? And I think in this film, we’re going to see that for the first time, where they’re fighting – really fighting – for control of the body, and Hulk talking, this idea of a more cognitive Hulk who can say sentences, that is a…obviously it’s in the comics, it was something that fans want to finally see. He didn’t say a single word in [Age of] Ultron! But yeah it’s what fans wanted to see and it’s what I wanted to see too.
Stripped of Mjölnir and banished from Asgard by the unruly Hela (Cate Blanchett), there’s no question that Thor is about to face his toughest test yet. But as Waititi told IGN, Ragnarok is about Hemsworth’s Avenger calling upon his wit (and his friends!) to escape his nasty predicament and return home to save Asgard from total annihilation.
As for Planet Hulk, here’s another quote from the director about what viewers can expect:
I was just trying to inject my tone and sensibility into it, and then those guys who actually know the comics came in and were like, ‘Let’s just push it in this direction back here’. Korg and Miek, who are two characters from Planet Hulk, there’s that stuff. One difference is we have the Grandmaster ruling Sakaar instead of the Red King, and so there are those things, but I don’t really play that much attention to it. I’m trying to create cool characters and tone and story instead of ‘it has to be totally authentic to the comic’, because I think that’s when you run into trouble when you can’t be creatively free to adjust things.
Thor: Ragnarok lights up theaters on November 3rd. On the off-chance you missed it, you’ll be able to feast your eyes on the threequel’s inspired Comic-Con trailer here.