Midnight Mass actor Rahul Kohli may be busy filming Netflix’s House of Usher miniseries, but he had time enough on his hands to stop by Twitter and light a small fire. Apropos of nothing, the iZombie star fired off a Tweet declaring his love for a movie that consistently lands in the lowest percentile ratings of MCU films, The Incredible Hulk.
The Incredible Hulk has always been the estranged cousin of the MCU proper. Although The Hulk has been in all of the Avengers films, not to mention Thor: Ragnarok, the popular character has never had any solo movies of his own, due to legal tie-ups between Marvel Studios and Universal.
What’s more, the star of the movie didn’t even go on to be the official MCU Hulk. Ed Norton stepped into the character’s torn-up pants following the character’s non-MCU-affiliated big screen debut, Hulk, in which the not-so-jolly green giant was portrayed by Eric Bana. Debuting the character into the brand new MCU (Iron Man had premiered only months before), The Incredible Hulk was much better received than its predecessor, but Norton didn’t follow Robert Downey Jr. into the Avengers fold (despite a post-credits scene that feature Tony Stark approaching antagonist General Thunderbolt Ross, played in the movie by Sam Elliott).
In the years that followed, the movie has been in a weird limbo, with its main character replaced by Mark Ruffalo in the greater franchise. But for some fans, Kohli included, the film remains an underrated part of the greater franchise, canon or no canon. And the responses to his recent tweet show that he is far from alone in his admiration for the movie.