Like everyone else this week i have seen the avengers trailer and cannot wait for it to come out. Being there from the beginning with Iron Man really gives this feeling of absolute awe that this is really happening, I'm sure I'm not the only one experiencing it. So with the trailer premiering i took it as a perfect excuse to watch all the marvel studios films in order to get myself hyped for the upcoming film. I would have already went through them all by now but i am trying to show one of my roommates them as well so its taking longer than i expected.

Anyway ever since i saw the avengers trailer and getting my first glimpse of Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner something felt off. Don't get me wrong i trust in marvel studio's abilities to pick the right person for the role and i know that Ruffalo is more than capable of doing the part but the issue for me is that someone else should be playing that part in the film. I am of course talking about Ed Norton the previous actor who had the role in Marvel Studio's film Incredible Hulk. I always felt when i saw that film that he captured Bruce Banner perfectly for the film, something about the way he carried himself in that film always managed to stick with me. It's a shame that creative disputes came in the way of him coming back onto the avengers film.

Quickly after i thought of Norton a bigger question came to mind, Why wasn't the Incredible Hulk a bigger success in the box office? When i saw it in theaters i had an absolute blast in theaters and i wasn't even a hulk fan at the time, and even the critics gave it fairly favorable reviews at the time. Like Iron man it had a great lead actor in the role of the title character, a fun and fast paced plot, a memorable villain and even felt like a truly felt like a comic come to life on the screen. Plus while Iron Man first showed us the idea of a fully realized comic book universe, the incredible Hulk was the first one to capitalize on it. Tony Stark at the end credits anyone?

The only reason i can think why this film didn't do better was that theatergoers probably still had some of the aftertaste from Ang lee's hulk adaptation so not as many people bothered to try this one out. If that's the case then i feel even worse for this film and the ones after it will take some time for hulk films to get out of the shadow of the Ang lee film. Iron Man certainly had the benefit of being relatively unknown to cinema when it hit which i think contributed to its success quite a bit, if only that were the case with incredible hulk then maybe it could have at least hit 175 million in the US like Thor did.

I know I'm really ranting a lot about this film but i get the feeling ten years down the road when marvel has really established themselves after the avengers film everyone will think of the films that led up to it and i get the feeling that most will neglect to mention incredible hulk. While that isn't as tragic as how a potential daredevil franchise got crushed by that crappy theatrical cut, it is still sad to see there still be doubt about whether or not there will be a hulk sequel in the near future when Thor, iron man and cap are all getting sequels and in Iron Man's case a third film. And good for them mind you but i only wish that the hulk film could get that kind of love as well.