Why Hulk Wouldn’t Come Out in Avengers: Infinity War

Avengers: Infinity War landed in theaters pretty much everywhere around the world in April to cries of “just take our money!” – and it did. It took a lot of our money and smashed all kinds of records across the board, leaving us in pieces in its wake.

Folks have started poring over the commentary and bonus features on the Infinity War home release, and the Russo brothers have quite a few interesting things to add to the discourse in general on their directors’ commentary, but they took the time to specifically address the issues that plagued Bruce Banner after he smashed back down to Earth in the opening section of the film. It’s fair to say most of us had presumed that Hulk refused to make an appearance to take on Thanos because he’d had his ass kicked by the huge purple madman earlier on, but it turns out that this isn’t the case.

“This was an interesting journey we went on with Banner, trying to decide how we move him forward in the Marvel Universe,” mused Joe Russo on the commentary (via Screen Rant). “What makes him unique as a character is that there is a host body that is being fought over by two distinct personalities who hate each other. And both want control of the host body. So we thought an interesting direction to take him in is what if Banner, who typically uses the Hulk to solve crisis situations, what if the Hulk were no longer interested in solving those problems for Banner? So that the relationship is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. That’s what’s going on here. People have speculated whether there was some fear on the Hulk’s part about having to face Thanos again. But I think ultimately what it is, is that he’s tired of playing hero to Bruce Banner.”

Sounds reasonable to us.

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