2.2 Incredible Hulk
Bruce Banner is in Paraguay. In our opening, he returns to the single room he’s renting, greeting his neighbours in halting Spanish. In his room, he makes himself some food and logs onto a battered laptop, opening a secure messaging app.
There’s no-one online, but there is a message waiting for him from a ‘Mr Blue’, talking about the progress he believes he’s making with the blood sample Bruce sent him, but saying that he needs more data before he can be certain his cure will work - exposure levels, cell saturation, Geiger readings - and asking Bruce to come to New York so Mr Blue can examine him in person.
Bruce, whose username is ‘Mr Green’, replies that it’s still not safe, and that all the data he has is back home and inaccessible to him.
Just as he’s about to shut down the laptop again, there’s the distinctive electronic ping of a new message. The message is from a user named Mr Red.
Mr Red: I have a proposition for you, Dr Green.
Mr Green: Who are you? How did you find this chat?
Mr Red: I’m a friend. I know who you are, and why you had to leave America. I want to help.
Mr Green: Are you working for the Army?
Mr Red: No. The General’s daughter told me how to contact you.
Mr Green: What did you do to her?
Mr Red: Nothing, I swear. I know you have no reason to trust anyone at this point, but I really do just want to help.
Mr Red: I’m not going to find out where you are. I could, but I won’t. But if you find yourself in a corner, call 001-212-970-4133, and wherever you are in the world, I will come get you.
Mr Green: Why would I do that?
Mr Red: I know about the Other Guy. I know why you had to leave. I know who’s chasing you. I’m not afraid of you, and I don’t want to weaponise you.
Mr Red: Let’s be real. Even if I do have ulterior motives, that’s the best offer you’re going to get.
Bruce slams the laptop closed, and immediately starts packing his meagre possessions, leaving the possibly compromised laptop behind as he leaves the apartment.
When we see him next, he’s in Brazil, taking lessons on breathing techniques with a Brazilian jujitsu master. When he’s not studying, he works at a soft drink factory, off the books so he can’t be traced. While working at the factory, he catches his hand on a sharp bit of wire while repairing some electrics for the owner. He rushes down to the production line, cleans up the spilled blood, but he doesn’t notice that some of the blood had got into one of the bottles.
The contaminated bottle is sealed up and shipped off with the others. Eventually it arrives in Milwaukee, where a man drinks it and collapses. Local news picks up the story, of course. The man has radiation poisoning from exposure to Bruce’s blood, and ‘Is your kid’s soda radioactive?’ is just the kind of story news outlets love, so within days it’s in the national press as well.
We cut to the office of General Thaddeus Ross, where he’s briefing Emil Blonsky, on loan to SOCOM from the British Army, on the situation. Since random gamma radiation where gamma radiation has no place to be is suspicious as hell, they had managed to obtain the bottle. DNA tests confirmed what Ross suspected - the contamination originated with Bruce Banner. They’ve been able to trace where the soda was bottled, meaning they have a location, or as close to a location as they’ve had for years. Blonsky is being sent with a squad of men to Rocina, Brazil, to bring Bruce in. When Blonsky asks if Banner is a fighter, Ross tells him he stole military secrets and has killed at least six people, including a soldier, so they shouldn’t take the time to find out. Tranq first, ask questions later.
Back in Brazil, it’s late. Bruce is lying in bed, half-watching his small TV across the room when the stray dog he’s been feeding jumps up, its body language tense. Bruce cracks the shutters on his window just enough to see men coming up the street, moving quickly and quietly, dressed in tactical black and armed to the teeth.
Outside the door of Bruce’s room, one of Blonsky’s men carefully inserts a pinhole camera into the room, which shows a figure apparently asleep in the bed and a dog who is very interested in this weird thing being shoved under the door.
They blow the door off, storm the apartment and tranq the figure in the bed, only to realise that it’s every truant teen’s favourite; pillows arranged to look like a person.
Blonsky tranquilizes the dog, because the audience needs to know he’s a bad person, and searches the apartment. He finds the back window open and a rope leading down to the ground.
Bruce seems to have evaded them, dropping into his downstairs neighbour’s apartment to hide rather than heading for the street, but once he leaves he turns onto a main street and immediately finds Blonsky and his men, who chase him through the favella.
Bruce has the advantage of knowing the terrain, at least more than the soldiers do, but he’s a scientist, not a fighter. He ducks into a corner to catch his breath, his wrist heart-rate monitor going crazy as he desperately tries to use the breathing techniques he’s been studying to stave off the Hulk.
He makes it to the factory where he’s been working, but some of the guys he works with see him going in and follow him. They accuse him of breaking in to rob the place, and though he tries to explain in his limited Portuguese and warn them that they need to get to safety, they don’t believe him and a fight breaks out. Bruce manages to keep his cool for the first couple of punches he takes, but when Blonsky shoots a tranq into a man standing right next to Bruce, the stress is too much and he loses control.
The soldiers go in, but their tranqs bounce off the Hulk’s skin, and when they switch to live ammo, so do their bullets. Hulk defends himself, throwing bits of machinery, but he’s trying to escape, not fight, and eventually he just runs.
In the aftermath, Blonsky confronts Ross. He demands to know why they’d been told Banner would be alone when he had that… whatever it was with him, bad intel that had got Blonsky’s men killed. Ross hedges and evades and eventually admits the truth - that the monster and Banner are one and the same.
Bruce wakes up naked, covered in other people’s blood (and a lot of soda), in a forest. Since towns need water, he follows the river, eventually ending up in a small village. People come out to stare, mothers cover their children’s eyes, but it’s not until he collapses on the steps of a church that someone approaches him.
He’s expecting Portuguese, but instead they address him in Spanish, and it takes a few tries before he can understand the words. They ask him what happened, and he doesn’t have an explanation and he doesn’t want to scare people, so he just repeats that it had happened a long way away in his best Spanish, until the local priest comes and takes him back to his house.
He gives Bruce a bucket of water to wash himself in the yard, and clothes to wear. When he’s looking more like a human being, he brings him into his house and feeds him and lets him sleep on his couch.
Bruce wakes up in the middle of the night, shocked awake by nightmares, and lies there in the dark, weighing his options. He could stay in Guatemala, but what happened in Brazil, and Paraguay, and Canada before, will happen again. He could go back to America, seek out Mr Blue and his potential cure, but that means crossing the border, and Hulk does not have a good track record with Border Guards.
There are no good options available. So why not try a bad one?
Quietly, so as not to wake the priest sleeping in the next room, he picks up the telephone and dials the number Mr Red had given him.
The voice that answers is American, male, and surprisingly awake for what must be the middle of the night.
“I don’t know this number, so this had better be important.”
“Mr Red?”
“Oh shit, is that you, Doc? What the hell are you doing in… Guatemala? Wait, no, don’t answer that. You can tell me all about it when I come get you. I assume that is why you’re calling?”
“Yeah. I… I think I’ve run out of options that aren’t completely insane, so yeah. I have no idea where I am, though.”
“Me neither. The Other Guy took you backpacking across South America and it didn’t even make the evening news. Tell him from me, good job. Don’t worry about location, JARVIS can get that from the area code. J, how long will it take in the suit to… alright fine, how long by chopper then? Really? Okay, I’ll be with you in four hours. Please don’t talk yourself out of this in the meantime, I swear I just want to help, and I think weaponizing the… thing that you can do that I’m not going to name over an unsecured connection is the stupidest idea the General ever had in a lifetime of stupid ideas.”
He hangs up and Bruce settles in to do his breathing techniques and not panic while he waits for whoever the hell Mr Red turns out to be.
Tony Stark comes personally to pick Bruce up, in a shiny black Stark Industries helicopter, and Bruce is so baffled by his excitement and complete lack of fear that he allows himself to be bundled aboard and flown back to Malibu without a word of complaint.
Bruce quickly concludes that Tony is probably insane. He insists he can see the future, that he and Bruce are going to be good friends, are going to do important work together one day - but his desire to help seems to be genuine. And after so long on the run, access to hot showers, a real mattress, and every restaurant that delivers in the greater Malibu area is worth any amount of eccentricity.
Tony shows him his lab, keeps up with him in technical discussions, and even presents him with an interesting problem in the search for Steve Rogers. Bruce almost starts to feel like a normal person again.
And then Tony’s best friend, James Rhodes, finds out that Bruce is a wanted fugitive and it all goes to shit. Tony refuses to give Bruce up, but that just makes it worse. He’s watching the person who’s been so kind to him risk a friendship because of him.
He tells Tony he’s leaving, and though Tony’s not happy about it, he doesn’t try to stop him (“Don’t forget, big guy, I know all about your friend. I might be crazy, but I’m not crazy enough to try to keep the Other Guy somewhere he doesn’t want to be”). He gives him a StarkPhone, specially designed to be Hulk-proof, and tells him to stay in touch.
Tony asks him where he’s going, and Bruce says New York, but first he needs to stop at Culver University, to collect some research he left with a former student of his there.
Bruce gets onto the Culver Campus easily enough, but discovers that the building he needs now requires a University ID to get into, so it won’t be as simple as just walking in. He decides to visit an old friend, Stanley, who runs a pizza place in town. Stanley’s delighted to see him, telling Bruce about how the army had gone around questioning everyone, saying Bruce was a traitor who’d stolen military secrets. They even put up posters all round campus with a tip line to call, like Bruce was America’s most wanted or something. Stanley is quick to reassure Bruce that he’d never believed a word of it, but warns Bruce he’ll need to be careful on campus if he bumps into any old colleagues. He also tells Bruce that Betty Ross has a new boyfriend, Leonard Samson (who in this universe is apparently a competent psychiatrist, easily the biggest departure from the comics in the entire MCU).
He offers Bruce his spare room, and Bruce asks for another favour. He needs a job as a pizza delivery boy, which will give him a cover to get into the University.
The next day, he gets into the physics building by bribing the security guard with pizza and discovers Betty is still using the same password she always had when they were together. He starts by trying to search the research database for anything about the project that they worked on, but there’s nothing. Even the work he did before joining the Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project has been wiped. He searches the student database, but finds that Rick Jones is no longer at the University. On a whim, he opens Betty’s email and tries searching for Rick’s name, and he gets a hit. There’s an email telling Betty that he’s left Dr B’s files in her office, because he didn’t know what else to do with them.
Elated, Bruce jumps up to go and search for them, but someone spots him, demanding to know what the hell a pizza delivery boy is doing logging into university computers, and he’s escorted from the premises.
While Bruce has been befriending billionaires and delivering pizza, Blonsky has persuaded Ross that the Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project doesn’t need to end with Banner. He volunteers to be the first test subject for a safer version of the Super-Soldier Serum they’ve been working on.
Bruce arrives back at Stanley’s just as Betty and Leonard arrive. Betty is obviously overwhelmed at seeing him. Bruce does what he can to play it down, saying he’s just an old friend who happened to be in town, and Betty picks up on the vibe, playing along, but neither of them are particularly convincing liars.
Bruce says he’s only in town for a day, and Betty uses that as an excuse to ditch Len.
He’s nice about it, but after he leaves he happens to see the remains of one of the tip line posters Ross had had put up around town, and suddenly it clicks. Betty’s old friend and Betty’s ex. ‘Did you know the guy who used to teach physics is a wanted man’ is popular campus gossip, and it doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots and realise he’s just left his girlfriend with, so far as he knows, an extremely dangerous wanted murderer. Turns out, even all these years later, the tip line still works.
Betty and Bruce share a pizza and talk, somewhat awkwardly, about the old days. Bruce tells Betty about the research they did being wiped from the University systems. She tells him she knows. The Army took it, but she’d managed to take a copy before they did. When Bruce points out how dangerous that could have been, she says that it was their life’s work. She wasn’t going to just give it up without a fight.
Bruce asks about the files he’d left with Rick Jones, and Betty says that they’re in her office, under lock and key. She seems a little hurt that Bruce had entrusted part of their work to a former student rather than her, but Bruce explains that he knew the General would be watching her, but no one would expect him to leave important research with Rick, of all people.
The flash drive with their research is at Betty’s place, so they make their arrangements. Bruce will go back and stay the night with Betty, and then first thing in the morning “before the students are awake” they’ll go to the university to collect the other files, and Bruce will take a bus from the station in town to New York.
She puts up in her guest room, and it’s horribly awkward, both of them wanting things they know they shouldn’t want, the truth of what went down in that lab all those years ago hanging between them unspoken. After Betty says goodnight, Bruce lies on the bed, trying to do the breathing techniques he’d learned, but in the end he just breaks down and cries.
The next morning they head to campus as planned, and make for Betty’s lab. The box is in a locked cabinet in Betty’s office, and Bruce opens it to check over its contents. Betty, looking over his shoulder at the random assortment of CDs, papers, and lab equipment, comments that it looks like he’s got half a lab in there, and Bruce says that he’d just shoved everything on his desk into a box when he realised he needed to go on the run.
He verifies that Betty has the flash drive with their research on it, and the two of them leave, headed for the bus station.
Halfway across the campus they hear engines and Bruce spins around to see military vehicles coming straight at them. He shoves the box into Betty’s arms, tells her to keep it safe if she can and not to follow him, and takes off running.
Betty, guessing who’s running the show, plants herself in front of the nearest vehicle, yelling for Ross to come out and face her. He does, but nothing she says gets through to him. He’s a fanatic, and even the pleas of his only daughter bounce off the iron-hard shell of his belief in his own righteousness.
Bruce makes it onto a glass covered walkway between two of the University buildings, but he’s not fast enough and the soldiers flank him, sealing both exits. Ross orders gas grenades fired into the walkway. Betty takes off running, trying to get to Bruce, and even manages to take out one of the soldiers Ross sends after her with a well timed elbow, but she’s no more a fighter than Bruce is and she’s tackled to the ground. Seeing this, Bruce loses control.
The soldiers are no match for Hulk, even with heavy artillery, and Ross sends in Blonsky. Blonsky almost seems to be holding his own, and succeeds in luring Hulk into range of the sonic cannons, but they just make Hulk angrier, and he smashes them as well.
Ross gives the order to fall back, but Blonsky ignores it. He advances on Hulk, still firing a gun he must know will do nothing, and demands to know if that’s all Hulk has. Hulk responds by kicking him, just once, sending Blonsky flying into a tree with a sickening crunch.
Ross orders a helicopter gunship to cover them and begins the retreat. Betty manages to break away from the soldiers who had been holding her, running not away but towards. As she gets close to Hulk, she slows, staring up at him, trying to see the man she loves in his face.
As she asks, “Bruce?” the helicopter arrives, strafing them. Ross yells a desperate order for it to stand down, but it’s too late. Betty screams and collapses in a spray of blood, and Hulk catches her.
Ross, watching it all, hears the Hulk speak for the first time. He says just one word, “Betty”, in a voice full of the confused grief of a child not able to process what they’re seeing. When Betty doesn’t answer, Hulk roars again and leaps.
Bruce wakes up in a mountain cave, nothing below him as far as the eye can see but forest, no signs of civilization. Beside him lies Betty, still unconscious, her shirt and coat soaked in blood.
Buce examines her, berating the Hulk out loud as he does so for being so stupid, for bringing her into danger. He knows Hulk can’t hear him, but he’s so angry it has to go somewhere. He tears up the bottom of her shirt to make a bandage, binding the wound in her chest as tightly as he can, but she’s too pale and too cold, and he knows that it’s too little too late. He’s not a medical doctor, but even he can see that she’s lost too much blood. She needs a transfusion, and they’re in the middle of nowhere, with no way of getting to a hospital.
Betty half wakes, terrified and delirious, begging Bruce to save her, to do anything to save her, she doesn’t want to die, “please God, Bruce, don’t let me die!”
Bruce debates with himself. If he gives her a transfusion of his blood, she’ll probably die, but she’s going to die any way. Would even his irradiated blood be worth it if it buys them time to get help? He can’t bear the idea that he might kill her, but that’s selfishness, thinking of his feelings and not hers. If she’s going to die anyway, there’s no excuse to not at least try.
Assuming it’s even possible.
He rummages in the box, lying discarded on the cave floor nearby. The papers are soaked with blood, illegible, but there are some needles and some plastic tubing and he manages to rig up something to perform the transfusion.
For a moment, it seems like it’s worked. Colour returns to her cheeks, and when he touches her forehead, she’s not so cold. But she keeps heating up, going from freezing to feverous in a matter of minutes. He does his best to make her comfortable, but she starts to vomit, and he has to roll her into the recovery position.
As he’s rolling her over, the flash drive falls out of the pocket of her coat, and he registers for the first time that he’s still wearing the tattered remains of his trousers.
He pats them down and finds that the pockets are still full. He has the phone Tony gave him. When he turns it on, he finds it’s a satellite phone. He had the means to call for help. He’s killed Betty for nothing.
The thing about having been on the run for so long is that it’s forced Bruce to be practical, so he doesn’t wallow. There’s three numbers in the phone’s memory. He tries Tony first, but there’s no answer, so he tries the second number.
Despite his suspicion of Bruce, Rhodey agrees immediately to come and get them.
He arrives in a Stark Industries helicopter. Bruce had warned him that there was a medical emergency, and the chopper is kitted out. They get Betty onto a gurney, and Bruce gets her onto a drip so she at least won’t dehydrate, doses her with iodine in the vain hope it will absorb some of the radiation, and gets a better dressing than some torn strips of old shirt onto her wound. Against his better judgement, Rhodey allows Bruce to persuade him that Betty shouldn’t be taken to a hospital. The only person with any hope of curing her is Mr Blue, the one person who’s extensively studied Bruce’s blood. Reluctantly, Rhodey agrees to fly them to Manhattan.
Ross has had Blonsky - miraculously still alive but barely - taken back to base. He orders the doctors to repeat the dosage of super-soldier serum given to him before, and it works. Blonsky wakes up healed but half mad from the serum and his anger with the Hulk. He immediately insists he’s ready to go back into the field for round three, and Ross is desperate enough to believe him.
Samuel Sterns is astonished to see Bruce, the elusive Mr Green he’s been talking to but never actually met before, and even more astonished to see Rhodey carrying an unconscious woman. Hurriedly, Bruce explains what had happened, and Sterns suggests the best way to save her might be to give her a dose of the serum Bruce took. It will mutate her temporarily, but they have Sterns’s experimental cure.
Using the data Betty had saved, they replicate the serum, working as quickly as they can, while Rhodey does what he can to care for Betty. Finally, Sterns injects Betty with their prototype serum.
The effect is immediate. She jerks up almost to a sitting position, eyes opening just long enough to see that her iris is ringed with vivid green, before she collapses back, beginning to fit as her veins turn green and her muscles begin to bulge.
Even knowing what was coming, Bruce is horrified to see the woman he loves going through the thing which destroyed his life. He orders Sterns to give her the prototype cure. Sterns does as he’s told, but instead of destroying the mutation, it changes it, her skin going from green to scarlet, her fingernails elongating into talons. Suddenly she’s thrown forward, hard enough to break the straps on the table, as her shoulder blades begin to grow, becoming huge, red-feathered wings. She’s become the Harpy.
To Bruce’s horror, Sterns seems delighted by this, talking excitedly of the possibilities it presents, the next step in human evolution. He even admits that he’s been synthesising Bruce’s blood, not to cure it, but in the hope of harnessing its potential.
As Betty’s eyes finally open, the restored Blonsky arrives with a squad of Ross’s men, kicking in the door in time to see Betty tear away the straps that hold her to the gurney with her talons, and smash through the wall of the lab, flying away.
Bruce is horrified, staring after Betty’s monstrous retreating form, so horrified that he doesn’t see Blonsky raise his gun and fire, the tranq dart knocking him unconscious before Hulk has a chance to react. When Rhodey demands to know who the hell they are, Blonsky orders him to be taken into custody for aiding and abetting a known fugitive.
The soldiers take Bruce and Rhodey away, but Blonsky, making the connection between the woman Hulk took away and the monster he saw smash its way out of the lab, realises Sterns can give him the one thing he wants - strength equal to the Hulk. Despite Sterns’s attempts to dissuade him, because even mad Sterns isn’t stupid and he can see Blonsky’s already had a dose of some unknown variant of the serum, Blonsky orders Sterns to give him the same combination of blood and serum that Betty had been given.
Blonsky is transformed into the Abomination, attacking Sterns and throwing him into the vials of Bruce’s blood before escaping out through the hole Harpy had made and rampaging through Harlem.
The army tries to fight him, but they’re no more use than they were against Hulk. Bruce demands they take him back, that they at least try to let Hulk fight Abomination. Ross refuses, but Rhodey’s having none of it.
“I guess it seemed pretty easy when the only people who knew your dirty secrets were civilians, civilians you made into fugitives. Who’s going to listen to them? But you know who they will listen to? A decorated colonel. The military’s very own superhero. You really think being a General gives you immunity? We’ve got plenty of Generals, but only one War Machine, and if you don’t let this man save Harlem, I’ll have you up before a military tribunal so far your head will spin, you understand me?”
Even Ross isn’t arrogant enough to risk that, so he consents, turning the chopper around.
When they’re over the Abomination, Bruce jumps, but it’s the Hulk who hits the ground.
Rhodey calls Tony, telling him what’s going on and to send the War Machine armour to Harlem so Rhodey can help.
Hulk and Abomination fight their way through Harlem, and they’re pretty evenly matched, but Abomination has that killer instinct, that innate cruelty, that Hulk lacks. Abomination beats Hulk down, throwing everything at him. Just as it seems like Hulk really is going to lose, he looks up at the sky and grins. Suddenly he grabs Abomination, using all his strength to hold him still, muscles bulging from the effort, when the clouds clear and silhouetted against the moon we see a monstrous bird. The Harpy has returned.
She swoops down, the back draft from her huge wings sending debris flying. She grasps Abomination’s head in her talons and beats her wings, spiralling up into the sky and taking Abomination’s head with her, a spray of blood arcing into the sky and then hitting the rooftop where it sizzles and burns like acid.
Hulk tosses Abomination’s body aside, and Harpy drops the head, coming down to land in front of him. Harpy and Hulk just stare at one another, sharing a moment of silent communication, and then she collapses, transforming back into Betty as she falls. Hulk catches her, cradling her body as he had after the battle at Culver, before he too reverts to human form.
Ross steps out of the helicopter and orders his surviving men to take both of them into custody, but before anyone can move, Iron Man arrives, followed by a S.H.I.E.L.D Quinjet piloted by Clint Barton. Barton tells Ross that Betty and Bruce are both now in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, and if he has a problem with that, he can take it up with Director Fury.
Later, in the Quinjet on their way back to SHIELD, even Tony seems to understand the unspoken rule to give Bruce and Betty space. Bruce is awake, staring silently out of the window, only reacting when Betty stirs.
He starts to explain what had happened, but is shocked to discover that she remembers most of it. He asks her if she blames him, and she looks him right in the eye, no hedging or prevaricating, and tells him yes.
“I understand why you did it Bruce, I do. You were trying to help me, and I know I should be grateful. I am grateful. But I’m also angry. You made, not just medical decisions, huge decisions, decisions that will affect every moment of the rest of my life, without consulting me! It might not be fair of me, but that… I don’t know if I will ever be able to forgive you for that violation.”
And then before Bruce can respond, she unbuckles her seatbelt and demands Clint, who’s flying the jet, open the door. He looks to Tony, who looks to Bruce, who tells him it’s up to her. Shrugging, Clint opens the door and Betty jumps out. Bruce rushes to the window, and for a moment there’s nothing, and then we see a huge red shape, swooping away into the darkness.
In our post credits scene, Bruce and Tony are in the Arctic, watching as a team dig into the ice. One of the team smashes through a lump and there, below it, is the nose of a World War II fighter jet, a picture of Peggy Carter just visible. He shouts that they’ve found it, and Tony tells Bruce that they’d better call Coulson, because they’ll never hear the end of it if they don’t.
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