While The Comedy Central Roast of Bruce Willis was full of insults slung at the famous actor, not every zinger was meant for the Die Hard star. Quite often at these shows the roasters also insult each other, or really, anybody or anything else they want. While Willis' Moonrise Kingdom co-star Edward Norton had some great one-liners aimed at Willis, he saved some jabs for the time he spent working with Marvel Studios. Norton lamented the time he tried to become an action hero like Willis, when he starred in The Incredible Hulk, saying...
I tried to be like you. I did a big action movie called The Incredible Hulk. You know what went wrong? I wanted a better script.
A lot of the specific details of exactly what transpired between Edward Norton and Marvel on the set of the second Marvel Cinematic Universe film, The Incredible Hulk, are not entirely clear. However, what can be said is that things didn't work out. The fact that Edward Norton wanted a better script is certainly known because the actor actually did some rewrites to the original script himself. There were then also reportedly some disputes on the editing side as chunks of the movie that were filmed never made it into the final cut, and there were different opinions between Norton and others regarding how long the film should be.
What is clear, is that the issues between Edward Norton and Marvel were significant enough that the role of Bruce Banner has become the most significant recasting in the MCU to date, as Mark Ruffalo was brought in to take over the role for The Avengers and has been playing the part ever since.
Based on Edward Norton's second shot at Marvel during the Roast (via The Hollywood Reporter), he doesn't seem to think the end result lived up to the expectations that he had for it, claiming that aiming for making it as good as the worst movie from another director with comic book experience wasn't an unreasonable goal, but one the movie failed to achieve.
I thought we should try to make one Marvel movie that was as good as the worst Chris Nolan movie, but what the hell was I thinking.
While there are certainly going to be differing opinions on the topic, many might argue The Dark Knight Rises is, in fact, the worst Christopher Nolan movie. That would still be solid company to be in, which is, of course, Edward Norton's point.
Edward Norton has not tried to follow in Bruce Willis' footsteps again as he has seemingly left the action genre behind. Instead, he's had to accept numerous critically acclaimed roles and Oscar nominations rather than significant box office success. Everybody involved is probably pretty happy with where they are.
