Professor Hulk showed up in Avengers: Endgame, rockin quite a different look by comparison to the angry green guy’s previous appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The character has Mark Ruffalo‘s face, enlarged and in green, but he was also wearing clothes unlike previous versions. This smarter Hulk had a shirt on and wore a pair of glasses to really sell the intelligence with his appearance. As it turns out, this wasn’t always going to be the case, as early concept art designs featured Hulk wearing those glasses but stilling going shirtless. As Professor Hulk called it himself, the look might have been a bit, “gratuitous.”
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Concept artist Jerad Merantz shared a design of the Hulk from his early work on Avengers: Endgame. In it, the character seems to have leaned out a bit, but taken on the glasses and more fitting long pants.
Check out Merantz’s design of Professor Hulk below.
The character who refused to show up at all after the first act of Avengers: Infinity War had merged with Bruce Banner to become a smart, talking, and thinking green monster for Avengers: Endgame. While Professor Hulk was not introduced until Avengers: Endgame‘s first act in the diner scene, he almost emerged in the final moments of Avengers: Infinity War according to writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.
“We screamed bloody murder when it was decided, and we helped decide it, but mostly we were the last ones in the room to acquiesce, was changing the smart Hullk transformation at the end of Infinity War,” McFeely told ComicBook.com. “Because it was designed for him to pop out of the [Hulkbuster armor] as smart Hulk, and we’re just going, ‘No you can’t… We can’t undo that. Because the whole first act of Endgame…we’d already shot it. How are we going to explain it and all this stuff?” McFeely said. “It was much better for the movie if it didn’t happen, because it’s part of this whole somber end of act three. But that was the biggest thing where Chris and I were like, ‘They’re screwing it up!’”
“I completely understand why it got cut and I think it works, actually, better without it,” Markus said.
Then, there’s the deleted scene with the Hulk from Avengers: Endgame which became a moment of comedy for those who attended the film’s re-release. “The Hulk skyscraper scene…” Markus calls it. “I loved it. One, because I thought the Hulk was funny, but it was also, it became this ’80s movie homage, to the point where we got Reginald Vel Johnson to come to Atlanta for one night and basically be the guy from Die Hard, only now he’s a fireman. I remember it was the last night of additional photography, and it was just sort of like we were outside of the skyscraper in Atlanta and Reginald VelJohnson was there and it was like, this movie is nuts. How great is this?”
Do you think holding Professor Hulk for Avengers: Endgame was the right move or would you have rather seen him emerge from the Hulkbuster armor during the battle in Wakanda from Avengers: Infinity War? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram and Twitter.
Avengers: Endgame is available now on blu-ray and digital downloads.
