Why do the Actors Matter?

[Tonguez]

Like any character, there's been a million takes. The old Bill Bixby Banner wasn't particularly angry at all. Heck, he wasn't even all that repressed. But, his trigger was usually because of the relentless hounding and pursuit he was facing. Otherwise, he was just a normal guy.

And, as far as comic book Banner goes, the character has undergone so many changes and rewrites over the years that it's more like Batman - it really depends on who is writing him at the time.

Please Mr McGee, Dont make me angry, you wont like me when Im angry.

I thought Bill Bixby did a good job of portraying the desperate paranoid trying to live a life while avoiding trouble. Of course I was 8 at the time so my assessment might lack nuance.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Bixby Hulk was fuelled by grief (see the pilot episode). He did a good job of portraying that underlying trauma. My preferred live action Banner.

 

[Ryujin]

Like any character, there's been a million takes. The old Bill Bixby Banner wasn't particularly angry at all. Heck, he wasn't even all that repressed. But, his trigger was usually because of the relentless hounding and pursuit he was facing. Otherwise, he was just a normal guy.

And, as far as comic book Banner goes, the character has undergone so many changes and rewrites over the years that it's more like Batman - it really depends on who is writing him at the time.

Yup. Not saying this Banner is necessarily better than others. If you read back you'll see I'm saying why I like this particular depiction, and explaining what I see in it.

 

[Kaodi]

One guy who I think you could probably not actually recast anytime soon is Deadpool*. Much of that of course being that Ryan Reynolds is completely tied up in the authorship of his iteration.

*Variants do not quite count the same way.

 

[Ryujin]

One guy who I think you could probably not actually recast anytime soon is Deadpool*. Much of that of course being that Ryan Reynolds is completely tied up in the authorship of his iteration.

*Variants do not quite count the same way.

More than that, it's like Reynolds' entire career was setting him up to play a wise cracking, fourth wall breaking character like Deadpool. Watch most of his older movies and you can see it. All the way back to "Van Wilder", which I think was his first headlining role.

 

[Willie the Duck]

More than that, it's like Reynolds' entire career was setting him up to play a wise cracking, fourth wall breaking character like Deadpool. Watch most of his older movies and you can see it. All the way back to "Van Wilder", which I think was his first headlining role.

I didn't see his childhood acting, and his appearance in The X-Files was a played straight, but he was playing a prototype of the same character at least as far back as Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think part of the problem is that media has trained us to think of super geniuses as either absent minded autists or smarmy jackasses. The idea that a normal seeming guy could have an IQ of 170 becomes difficult to find believable.

I was going to go into some detail here, but cutting it down severely, I know a lot of people with very high IQs (and not the "I did a test on the internet" kind) and have a fairly high one myself and I have to say, the stereotypes are broadly true (probably of me too!), albeit almost everyone mellows with age and experience (up to a point, at which point they sometimes worse). This isn't a stereotype based on a kernel of truth, it's based on a solid, tangible lump of truth!

But there are exceptions, that is for sure - I can immediately think of one person I know IRL who is that smart, that educated, and proper scientist (and kinda famous, many of us have probably ready some of their work) who is an extremely nice, warm, kind, decent person, more so than most people (and only about as socially awkward as Ruffalo's Banner).

But I think think the issue here is more specific to this MCU version of this character.

Like any character, there's been a million takes. The old Bill Bixby Banner wasn't particularly angry at all. Heck, he wasn't even all that repressed. But, his trigger was usually because of the relentless hounding and pursuit he was facing. Otherwise, he was just a normal guy.

The specific issue here for me is with the discontinuity between how Banner has been written in the MCU and Ruffalo's performance. What I don't buy isn't "Ruffalo could be a Bruce Banner" - he totally could be - but rather "Ruffalo could be a Bruce Banner whose defining secret is that they're 'always angry'", because I don't believe the latter from his performance, whereas that seemed to be exactly Norton's portrayal.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I didn't see his childhood acting, and his appearance in The X-Files was a played straight, but he was playing a prototype of the same character at least as far back as Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place.

Yes exactly, my friends and I loved that show. The moment I heard "Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool" in the previous-era Wolverine movie I was like "Perfect casting", and then I saw what they did with him the first time out and I was like "How much cocaine did you guys snort when writing this movie, because it was at least 10x much as you should have". It was not good. But thanks to Reynolds himself pushing hard they fixed that. And fixed it more. And then the bit got kind of too old and self-indulgent with the most recent one (like a lot of Reynolds' recent work sadly).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The specific issue here for me is with the discontinuity between how Banner has been written in the MCU and Ruffalo's performance. What I don't buy isn't "Ruffalo could be a Bruce Banner" - he totally could be - but rather "Ruffalo could be a Bruce Banner whose defining secret is that they're 'always angry'", because I don't believe the latter from his performance, whereas that seemed to be exactly Norton's portrayal.

Quite. Although I think Bixby did a better job of combining traumatised with being a likeable character who we care about.

 

[Ryujin]

Yes exactly, my friends and I loved that show. The moment I heard "Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool" in the previous-era Wolverine movie I was like "Perfect casting", and then I saw what they did with him the first time out and I was like "How much cocaine did you guys snort when writing this movie, because it was at least 10x much as you should have". It was not good. But thanks to Reynolds himself pushing hard they fixed that. And fixed it more. And then the bit got kind of too old and self-indulgent with the most recent one (like a lot of Reynolds' recent work sadly).

Whoever saw a character with the nickname "The Merc with the Mouth", cast a guy who is built for off the cuff responses, and then took away his mouth should never work again.