In Marvel Comics, Hulk isn’t exactly the most verbose member of The Avengers – stuck with a short vocabulary and a habit of referring to himself in the third person – but he does talk quite a bit more than his Marvel Cinematic Universe counterpart. Between The Incredible Hulk and The Avengers, the character has only had a handful of lines, and none of them have been more than three words. From the outside it looks as though Marvel Studios is still trying to find a way to get the giant green monster to speak up - and it was still a work in progress when I visited the set of The Avengers: Age of Ultron this past summer.
Mark Ruffalo himself revealed this interesting conundrum while chatting with myself and a small group of other journalists between set ups, discussing just how much we’ll be getting to hear The Hulk speak in the upcoming sequel. Though the production was months into filming by the time we got there, the actor revealed that he, Joss Whedon and the folks at Marvel were still working out exactly how much and when the gamma radiated beast would be talking. Said Ruffalo,
"We’re sorta’ still working that out. He will [speak]. We’re just kind of trying to figure out… there’s a couple of different places to do it. But he’s not gonna' have a soliloquy. Not yet, anyway. We’re working for that. Joss has a couple ideas where to put [the dialogue]."
At that point during filming, Joss Whedon hadn’t even told Mark Ruffalo what Hulk’s possible lines would be (though they’ll be spoken by Lou Ferrigno anyway). But while the actor was rather in the dark about exactly how much we would be hearing from the Incredible one, he does have a pretty good idea of what they are planning. "I kinda’ know where we’re headed with it," Ruffalo added. "But he hasn’t given me the line yet."
In Marvel Studios’ past, Hulk’s dialogue has been used to give certain sequences some nice punctuation – and it has worked out pretty well so far. The most notable, of course, are the "HULK SMASH" in The Incredible Hulk:
And the hilarious "Puny god," in The Avengers:
How much do you want to see Hulk talk in The Avengers: Age of Ultron? What would you like to hear him say? Pitch us your best ideas in the comments below!
