Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I recently had a great conversation with Mark Ruffalo about his Golden Globe nominated performance in Infinitely Polar Bear. I'll post the full interview here in a few hours, but I wanted to drop a little bit of that conversation for you Marvel fanatics.
It was hard to get a read on whether or not Ruffalo was full on speculating about where Marvel plans to take the character of The Hulk when he appears in Thor: Ragnarok, but it's pretty clear that at least as far as his performance is concerned he played the final moments of the big green brute in Age of Ultron as if the Banner personality was asserting more control.
Here is the exact exchange:
Quint: I have to bring up The Hulk. I know Marvel's got snipers everywhere, so you can't say anything about the new stuff, but it's now known that Hulk's coming in the new Thor movie. Last we saw of him, his biggest fear, of losing control, had happened and it kinda messed him up. I imagine we'll be getting more of him dealing with that in the next film, but is that where your brain is at the moment with the character?
Mark Ruffalo: He's on the run. I think that we carry that through. It's not just a matter of taking himself to some remote place and hiding. Now he's removing himself from humanity altogether. I'm not sure where we're going to head with that, but I'm sure that's probably still very much alive within him.
It's very subtle, but the Banner/Hulk consciousness is beginning to meld a little bit. Who decided to leave? Was it Banner or Hulk? It's not really in the (cinematic) mythology of Hulk up until that moment to be that conscious and pro-active. It's interesting, right?
Quint: It's very interesting and I think having the two brains move closer together gives you a lot of meat to sink your teeth into with the character. I think that sounds like a lot of fun.
Mark Ruffalo: Yeah, I think it is. I think it's really exciting where we could go with it. Now I feel like we're kind of in No Man's Land. I mean, the comic books have kind of broached the subject, but we're moving away from the traditional Hulk/Banner relationship. We're starting to mess with it a little bit.
Quint: We've never seen it on screen before, for sure. Not with the TV series or any of the movies.
Mark Ruffalo: No. Now we're going to see how far we can push the limits of it before people get sick of it!
Something to chew on as you get your last minute holiday shopping done.
Stay tuned for the full interview, which should post later in the afternoon. It's super fun. Ruffalo and I talk about his process as well as cover shit like how awesome Peter Falk is, why The Brothers Bloom isn't considered a modern masterpiece and how bad he wants to be a part of Star Wars.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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