Mark Ruffalo might be credited with bringing the most likable version of Hulk on the big screen, having made multiple appearances as the Green Goliath in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, Edward Norton remains the most talked about – for both good and bad reasons – actor to play the live-action version of Bruce Banner despite donning the avatar for just one movie, The Incredible Hulk (2008).
For the most part, the Fight Club star attracts the headlines, and fans debate for delivering the most authentic rendition – darker and stronger, to be precise – of the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby-created Marvel character. And it seems if Norton had his way, he would not just attract plaudits for his acting but also for his writing contributions.
What Edward Norton Said About His Role in Shaping The Incredible Hulk’s Script
In The Incredible Hulk, Edward Norton played scientist Bruce Banner who must find a cure for the gamma radiation that contaminated his cells and turned him into the Hulk and subsequently put him face-to-face with a powerful enemy, The Abomination.
Norton seamlessly went from playing a nameless timid white-collared insomniac in Fight Club to the powerful huge green creature in only the second MCU movie after Robert Downey Jr.‘s Iron Man. When asked about the transformation, which was no less surprising than Bruce Banner’s transformation in the movie, Norton said at the San Diego Comic-Con (via MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios): “Well, I wrote the film.”
This wasn’t a tongue-in-cheek statement, as even Zak Penn, the original screenwriter of the movie, seemingly felt the actor was the “writer” on the set. While talking about not spending time on location during the shoot, he said (via MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios):
“It was kind of painful. All these people I was friends with were still working on it, and I understood. What could I do? What was I going to say? There’s no point in the writer being there when the lead actor is the writer.”
From Penn’s point of view, the changes Norton made to his script were “cosmetic”, possibly because much of the film had already been “storyboarded and pre-visualized”, possibly because Norton was trying to “position himself for an eventual credit arbitration” with the Writers Guild of America.
It will certainly be interesting to hear the 54-year-old’s side with regard to what he was actually aiming for during the movie’s production.
How Edward Norton Tried to Hijack The Incredible Hulk
Penn, who has writing credit on high-profile movies like The Avengers and Free Guy, highlighted a number of tweaks the lead actor made in the original script, including walking the character west down the street wearing a red hat instead of east down the street wearing a blue hat.
The name of his downstairs neighbor was also changed from Lorina to “Malina or something.” Penn went on the underline the most prominent change of all, stating (via MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios) :
“There was some stuff at the end that he really changed. I had a scene where, when Ross picked Banner up from the hospital earlier in the movie, he throws him out of the helicopter. It was a pretty shocking moment. They moved that to a moment when he chooses to jump into Harlem. So that’s a big difference: I felt like [the original version] would have been a really cool scene, and I didn’t totally understand why he would jump out into Harlem, given that he could theoretically kill a lot of people.”
Regardless of the changes, when the Louis Leterrier-directed movie’s credits were determined, the guild ruled that Penn would be the sole credited screenwriter after a WGA arbitration.
Norton, meanwhile, never returned to do any other MCU movie and was subsequently replaced by Mark Ruffalo in the franchise.
