The Avengers

we enjoy the writings of film crit hulk, who composes all-caps essays on such topics as why you love movies (“because kurosawa”), the critical reaction to “girls,” and the rigorous weirdness of david lynch’s “mulholland drive.” he also gives excellent screenplay advice. we asked film crit hulk to comment on the performance of mark ruffalo as hulk in “the avengers.” here is (the hulk-sized) response that he sent us:

“the bixbian tradition”—mark ruffalo in the legacy and logic of hulking

“what makes a good hulk?”

it is a question that hulk is asked frequently, perhaps for… obvious reasons. on the surface it seems so easy, the incredible hulk is simply the marvel universe’s answer to the jekyll and hyde monster. also it, like, smashes stuff.

but what makes that so compelling? are we just mindless receptacles for destruction? of course we aren’t. even with the most seemingly mundane icon there is always a psychological component to the characterization that is needed to elevate our interest. with the hulk you could argue that it is perhaps the lure of emotional eruption and the way we hope to give into our own raging ids. but no character, even the hulk, can truly resonate if he is merely a simple stand-in for our own desires. one does not become an icon merely through wish-fulfillment.

so perhaps there is a much better question at hand: what makes the hulk dramatic? what are we rooting for when we watch him? what is it that we want to happen in any given scene?

we have to go back to the central question: what makes the hulk so compelling to us?

hulk writes about it all the time, but one of the ongoing problems of blockbuster cinema these days is assumed empathy. it’s as if our storytellers just plop a film in our laps and say, “here’s our main character and we’re going to assume that you’re interested in them for that reason alone. they’re the main character!” … hulk despises this trend. it tends to get even worse when storytellers fall into the marketing-centric trap of “likability,” which is a word that has nothing to do with making characters interesting. usually it’s just a code word used by executives when they’re worried a character is “doing bad things.” and to adhere to the worries of likability is to thus embark on a fool’s play at drama.

you want real empathy? look at the pantheon of great heroes. beowulf. robin hood. sherlock holmes. indiana jones. even old bucket-head himself, tony stark. there’s something about these icons that makes them so much more than “heroes.” they’re engaging. they’re lively. they’re flawed. they’re interesting. and for the purposes of this discussion, they are testaments to the fact that empathy can never be assumed.

so how do we find that kind of empathy in hulks? the answer is obvious when you think about it: in order to care about the hulk, we really have to care about bruce banner.

it is this fact alone that the original tv series still sticks out in most people’s minds as the definitive version of the character. perhaps it was a simple result of the hour-long format and the era’s appreciation for relaxed storytelling, but the tv show spent so much time with banner that we came to really care about the man. on the surface he may have been a lonely, lost soul, but he was utterly defined by his generosity and self-sacrifice. and, of course, it doesn’t hurt that he was played by the wonderful bill bixby.

the first thing you notice while watching bixby is that he radiates this kindly, paternal energy. banner is usually considered the “weak” half of the equation, but bixby’s gentleness wasn’t a case of being meek, but dignified. he often had every reason to try and disappear, to refrain from trying situations, but he just had to help any time it was needed. in truth, bixby’s banner was his own kind of hero; a true moralist in the grand tradition of atticus finch. which means the reason his manifestations of the hulk resonated so deeply is because we truly cared about what happened to him. in truth, he was the last person you would ever want cursed with being the incredible hulk.

and that’s what made the show dramatic. it was a basic understanding of motive. the audience can’t just be sitting around waiting for the hulk-out. sometimes you have to be afraid of the hulk. sometimes you don’t want him to turn at all. sometimes you need him to because the characters we care about need him to turn. it was never about the joy of destruction, it was about the heart of empathy.

and that is precisely where the two recent hulk films failed. they were interested in the character but had no idea how to play it for dramatic purposes. sure, both films had some admirable qualities. ang lee’s film is at times beautiful and delirious, but so disappears into banner’s own demons that the audience loses all sense of banner-empathy and motive. and leterrier’s more recent film tries to rely solely on the tv’s show’s iconography and ends up doing that dreaded assumption thing hulk mentioned earlier. both films even had a strong central actor playing bruce banner, but both eric bana and edward norton’s versions of the character were defined by a sense of solipsistic detachment. it was as if they mistook the “self-sacrifice” element of the character for relentless dourism, which resulted in a rather un-bixbian sense of being closed off. nobody likes their heroes mopey. and rarely do we like the central conflict to be a battle in the character’s own mind. when it comes right down to it, neither actor seemed to realize that “the lonely man” didn’t really want to be lonely at all.

enter mark ruffalo.

it’s safe to say that with his performance in joss whedon’s “the avengers” some of those much needed qualities have returned. he doesn’t quite have bixby’s paternal element, but he does have that same inherent kindness. he isn’t moping or obsessed with his own problems, he’s gentle and dignified. there’s something so unassuming and even cute about him. when we first meet dr. banner in india, he’s doing medical work for the poor in “the most stressful place in the world.” but that doesn’t seem to be an issue for him. some years have passed and somehow he seems in full control. but he also seems impossibly weary and haggard. he’s a man who has lived and lost more than imaginable.

but luckily for the audience, whedon and ruffalo know the best way to make this sadness resonate. rather than hammer it home over and over again like the films before, they put banner out of his element and right into the thick of a somewhat “joyful” environment. sure, the avengers are dealing with some end-of-the-world gravitas, but all these giant personalities are bumping up against one another and having a ball. and as you watch banner you can see these hints that he’s having so much fun. sure, he plays it demure, but watching him connect in the lab with tony stark is one of the more joyful interactions he (and as empathy dictates, thereby the audience) has ever had.

which is exactly what makes banner’s rueful admission of a suicide attempt later on all the more gutting. note that ruffalo does not play the scene for sadness or maudlin sympathy. instead, there is an alarming normalcy to his admission. he’s simply cursed with ongoing life. and it is his performance in this scene that highlights just how much this banner is unlike any version we’ve had before. perhaps it’s ruffalo’s slight mumble or the way he speaks as if he’s always on the verge of a wry smile, but one can’t help but sense that his banner finds something funny about all of this. it’s as if he is the only one who is keenly aware of a cruel joke being played on the world. and never is this secrecy more apparent then when his fellow avengers constantly express their concern for an imminent “hulk out.” instead of listening, he just casually dismisses these concerns as trivial. he’s in control. the question is, how?

over the course of the film he constantly refers to his big green personality as “the other guy.” at first we think it’s one of those standard dissociative techniques. we assume this is motivated by simple fear, fear that we will grow angry and come to hurt people. but really this dissociation is about maintaining his “secret,” which is the very truth about how he stays in control and stops himself from getting too angry.

and then we learn the obvious truth: he’s always angry.

and as such, we learn that banner can call out his hulk at a moment’s notice. which, in this hulk’s opinion, is a wonderful evolution of the character. it speaks to the idea that our emotions are something that always present. anger can’t be abstained from. it cannot be feared. anger is simply an ever-present part of us, just as much as joy, sadness, or even something instinctual like hunger. it is something that is just felt. and hulk believes this is precisely where “the cruel joke” comes into play. for years, banner battled his own mind and merely turned out that fear of his own anger was a trap. really, he had to understand it. to recognize it and accept it. and that’s precisely what brought genuine control. the whole thing seems like a contradiction, but no more a contradiction than the idea that unleashing “the other guy” can be the very thing that makes his hulk heroic.

it is this ever-coiling duality of the hulk that is paramount to our finding the character compelling. think about it. one-note emotion and behavior is the death of any character, so why should the incredible hulk be any different? note the way the film changes when it enters its glorious last battle and it turns out this version of the hulk is a lot of fun. heck, ruffalo’s hulk is even responsible some of the most joyous and comedic moments the film has to offer (and should be noted, this hulk is actually a mo-capped version of ruffalo himself so it wonderfully can go back to being part of his performance). context is everything, and ruffalo’s hulk jumps around with the likes of a super soldier, a super-weapon, and a demi-god and like behaves like a juvenile, bullying older brother.

alas, some found this “fun” version of the hulk a wee bit jarring, as if it was somehow incongruent with how the character “should be”… but hulk would argue that this is precisely what make hulks, well, hulks.

hulk came of age during a the comic’s period of disassociate identities. the era of the loquacious joe fixit and bumbling savage hulk. heck, there were whole story-lines where hulk would be banished by dr. strange to a weird space-limbo / cross-dimensional hell (don’t ask), so weirdness never seemed all that outlandish. and more important, there wasn’t a “singularity” to the hulk identity. and the truth is there never has been. especially today, when the character has evolved and changed and gone through so many different versions that you could say we hulks contain whitman-esque multitudes.

so again, hulk gets asked the question all the time: what makes a good hulk?

and the answer is anything if you can make it compelling enough. but there’s no denying that hulks seem to be most compelling when you ground them in contradiction and explore life’s grand duality. ruffalo’s banner/hulk is one of the more dextrous and all-encompassing versions we’ve ever had and it’s no accident that people have been loving the crap out of him in the film.

so of course his version of the hulk can be a contradiction, because the hulk is a contradiction.

and hey, you don’t need to tell this particular hulk the humane value of contradiction. hulk is big and clumsy and bad at grammar, but also loves to plop some fellow avengers down on the couch for a double feature of ernst lubitsch’s “to be or not to be” and the coen brothers’s “miller’s crossing” (think about it. it’s perfect and you know it). comic juxtaposition just speaks to us.

so whether it’s bixby or bana, norton or ruffalo, feminist or drunk, there is always a way to explore the hulk character and metaphor in a larger sense. find a duality. find a contradiction. and explore to your heart’s content.

hulks might be big, but there more than enough room for all of us.