Road to Infinity War - Re-Watching the Marvel Cinematic Universe part 2: The Incredible Hulk

I'm not sure why, but The Incredible Hulk is that part of the MCU that too-often gets overlooked. It wasn't, I don't think, as successful in theatres as Iron Man, but it does a whole lot to set up the wider universe within which the characters exist. It does this by having a very cool opening sequence. Rather than us getting yet another origin story, TIH opens by showing us the Hulk's origin as the credits are rolling. It's somewhat similar to the origin story in Ang Lee's disappointing Hulk, but with a much more believable Edward Norton as Banner. There are also, near the beginning of the film, counts as to how many days it has been between "incidents." What these two devices do is place the origin of the Hulk somewhere in the recent past of the film's universe, and by extension Iron Man's universe. Thus we aren't saddled with the weird inception point of Stark becoming Iron Man. The film as filmic artefact is the inception point of the series, but narratively it is only one story of many that are ostensibly happening at the same time. Of course, once we get around to Captain America, we come to realize that there is a much longer history of powered individuals in the MCU, a phenomenon that is only compounded by the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television series.

It was a very wise move to do things this way. One of the things that makes comic book superhero universes successful is the history they carry with them. This can be both literal (i.e., the length of time a particular universe has been in publication existence) and narrative (i.e., the stories that weave backward in fiction time). In giving us a possibly concurrent origin for the Hulk as we have for Iron Man, the series moves from the premise that Iron Man's advent inspires other heroes to the premise that this is simply the latest age of heroes to dawn. DC's "Arrowverse" has had a lot of success with much the same process.

So while it may not have been the smash success that Iron Man was, which is definitely not to say that it's not a good movie, The Incredible Hulk is instrumental in establishing the MCU, and along with the first two Iron Man films provides a solid, and still relatively "realistic" setting upon which the subsequent films start to build a ridiculous and fantastic superhero universe. After TIH, things only get stranger in the MCU.

Well, there's a bit more groundedness in Iron Man II, which we'll talk about next.