Despite being listed towards the bottom of many MCU diehards’ list of favorite films, “The Incredible Hulk” really isn’t all that bad. Hindsight being what it is, we can nitpick various things, including the casting of Edward Norton, but honestly, given what we’re seeing with Marvel films as of late, Louis Leterrier’s ‘Incredible Hulk’ is pretty fun. Regardless of its quality, there are many who still see it as the first big MCU misfire, and a film that ultimately went off the rails.
In a recent watch-along on Happy. Sad. Confused., Louis Leterrier talked quite a bit about his 2008 Marvel Studios film, “The Incredible Hulk.” And he didn’t just compliment the work and shy away from talking about the behind-the-scenes drama. Instead, the filmmaker was quite candid about his experience. The big elephant in the room was arguably Norton, who famously fought with Marvel on the film. That said, Leterrier did seem to suggest everything was fine until the end of production and then it all suddenly went sideways between Norton and Marvel.
“Edward and I? Absolutely,” Leterrier said when asked if Norton and he were aligned creatively. “I think the whole way, we were all very much in lock step. It just got tense at the end. And I think at the end it was very tense about the tone and the level of humor, although Edward is very funny and, all is friends are comedians. He’s an extremely funny guy.”
Leterrier suggested Norton had wanted something darker than Marvel wanted.
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“But I think [Edward] was very right in defending the seriousness of the movie,” he added. “You have to remember it was the mid 2010s, ‘The Dark Knight’ had such an impact on superhero movies.
Was there a different cut that they came to blows on?
“Not at all,” he said explaining the movie started, in Norton’s cut with the famous failed suicide of Banner, where he turns into the Hulk instead of dying (seen on the DVD extras). “It was very much that opening with the comedic suicide, but we obviously, all knew, it’s four quadrant, we cannot start with that. But I thought it was a very important one.”
To hear that from Leterrier, it almost sounds like he and Marvel knew the movie could never open that way, but Norton thought it actually might. Leterrier also pointed to the soundtrack being a big tonal creative disagreement that wouldn’t work. Norton was friends with Radiohead and wanted them to either write the soundtrack or use their music, something Leterrier agrees wouldn’t work.
“Frankly, it’s maybe [because of the soundtrack],” he continued. “I don’t remember if it was the teaser or the overall soundtrack, but—Edward is great friends with Thom Yorke and he wanted Radiohead to do the music and that was genius, but we know what Radiohead sounds like and I think Marvel was pushing for a little bit more of a typical Hollywood soundtrack and we thought a compromise, not a compromise, but the elegant in-between was to find [composer] Craig Armstrong who had worked with Massive Attack to create a soundtrack which is haunting.”
Leterrier got off track with where all the soundtrack stuff went, but did note that in Norton’s original version of the script, you didn’t see the Hulk until the 40-minute mark and that was too long to wait for mainstream audiences.
“You don’t wanna wait for the Hulk and look at your watch and think, ‘When is the Hulk coming?’” Leterrier noted later. “You want to love the movie with Bruce banner and everyone else and actually fear the moment when the Hulk arrives. So you have this dichotomy of these two movies that are fighting with each other And the only way to do with it is a great script and frankly, amazing, actors, so you cast the hell out of it, so you cast actors who really clash well on screen, and seemingly don’t like each other, because that works really well, you bring the tension. And William Hurt , gives you that.”
Wrapping up the Norton piece of the conversation later in the podcast, Leterrier says he was “very surprised” when the Norton and Marvel relationship blew up and came to a head.
“I was very surprised, because there was no tension, no tension,” he stressed. “And then one day, it was done. And I was like, Oh! Ok,’ and I loved Edward, and I had to finish the movie.”
“It’s hard. It’s funny because I loved him,” Leterrier added, “He really has great taste, great instincts, great instincts for comedy, but… is… I feel bad because I really, really love him and I loved working with him.”
Leterrier suggests there’s no bad blood, but he does seem to feel guilty about the way things went down and how he was essentially compelled to finish the movie. He said he basically hadn’t talked to Norton in ten years since, except for a brief read carpet moment, and some brief post-split ‘Hulk’ editing, and recounted a story about how he saw Norton in a park with his kids recently, but didn’t really have the courage to go up to him and talk to him.
“I don’t know if he thinks I was part of the other guys—whatever. I was neutral,” he said awkwardly, trying to explain his part in the Marvel/Norton break-up. “I was literally like, let’s just make the best movie possible, and even after he was gone I was asking him what he thought about some ideas, so I just wanted him to be proud of this movie.”
You can watch the full discussion below: