Mark Ruffalo is chiefly known for two things when it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: playing Bruce Banner/The Hulk and frequently dropping spoilers by accident. One of the greatest examples of the latter took place in late 2017 during the Thor: Ragnarok world premiere. After broadcasting himself on Instagram Live beforehand to promote the Marvel movie, he accidentally left the app open, resulting in thousands, if not millions of people being able to hear Ragnarok’s first 10 minutes until a woman came to the actor and informed him about what he’d done.
You’d think doing something like that would land Mark Ruffalo in trouble, and while that seemed to initially be the case, he recently revealed that there was actually a positive payoff to his Instagram (or Facebook, he switches back and forth on that) blunder. Ruffalo recalled:
I get a call from Kevin Feige, the boss. He’s like, ‘What’re you doing, man?’ I said, ‘Kevin, it was an accident, I swear to God. They told me to use the Facebook Live, I don’t know how to use it.’ He goes, ‘You can’t do this stuff.’ I was like, ‘No, no, you’re right, sir.’ And the next day I showed up to do press, and I’m hurting. I can’t look anyone in the eyes. And I walk over to [Feige] to say sorry, and he grabs me in a bear hug, and he’s like, ‘That was genius! We got more press from that than the whole premiere! We couldn’t have imagined doing something that good. All they heard was laughing.’
Sometimes good ideas are thought up, and other times, like Mark Ruffalo leaving his phone on during the beginning of Thor: Ragnarok, good ideas are stumbled into. Granted, after listening to a recording of Ruffalo’s livestream, plenty of dialogue from the movie can be made out, but the audience’s reactions definitely come in louder since the phone was stuffed in his pocket.
Regardless, as Mark Ruffalo recounted during his visit to The Graham Norton Show, while Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige was initially disappointed that Ruffalo had failed to stop broadcasting, once he saw the press coverage about it, he did a 180 and told Ruffalo how it had actually worked out for Marvel. However, that was a one-time only success, so if you’re a Marvel actor at the world premiere of your movie, don’t do what Ruffalo did, whether accidentally or on purpose. Make sure your social media apps are closed, or just turn off your phone.
Mark Ruffalo stumbled into something great then, but there are plenty of instances where there were no positive benefits to him spoiling something, or at least coming close to, about a Marvel release. For instance, remember when he nearly said that half of everyone in Avengers: Infinity War died? Or how about that time he said that Captain America gets married ahead of Avengers: Endgame’s release?
It is worth remembering that Mark Ruffalo isn’t the only Marvel actor who has loose lips. Rivaling him on that front is Spider-Man actor Tom Holland, although Holland claims that Ruffalo is worse when it comes to dropping spoilers. Ruffalo also rightly got some good-natured teasing from Brie Larson about his habit of saying that he shouldn’t before Captain Marvel came out last year.
As for Mark Ruffalo’s role as The Hulk, Avengers: Endgame saw the Green Goliath’s brawn being merged with Bruce Banner’s brains, resulting in the best of both worlds. While his arm was injured when he brought the dusted back to life, he survived Endgame to the end, but as of yet, there’s no word on when or even if we’ll see the character again. However, Ruffalo does have some ideas about what could happen with Hulk next and has even met with Kevin Feige on the matter, so maybe the two of them are formulating where the character can go as we speak.
Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for updates on The Hulk’s status and more news concerning the MCU. Mark Ruffalo can be seen later this year playing dual roles in the HBO series I Know This Much Is True.
