Captain America: Brave New World’s Red Hulk Spoilers Explained by Director (& It Makes Sense)

Captain America: Brave New World director Julius Onah explains why the film’s Red Hulk fight was spoiled throughout the marketing campaign. In an interview with Empire, the filmmaker addressed Disney and Marvel’s decision to make the third-act set piece a crucial part of trailers and TV spots. Onah explained that while it would have been nice to preserve the reveal of Red Hulk as a massive surprise for opening weekend, that would have been an impossible task for the studio. In Onah’s mind, there were too many variables in play, including Harrison Ford’s casting as Thaddeus Ross and the passionate Marvel fan base being hungry for information about the movie.

“When you’re making a movie like this, an announcement goes out that Harrison Ford is going to play Thaddeus Ross, and you have a fandom as massive and as passionate as the MCU fandom is, you’re toast at that point, you know?” Onah said. “In a perfect-case scenario, it would have been awesome [if ] that [had been] an in-theatre surprise, but I think it would have been very difficult. Somewhere along the way, a toy would have been found, or somebody would have leaked a trailer. It’s just so hard to keep anything secret in today’s day and age.”

From the beginning, Marvel made no effort to hide Red Hulk’s role in Captain America: Brave New World. A glimpse of the character capped off the first Brave New World teaser trailer released last summer. Subsequent marketing materials continued to lean into Sam Wilson’s showdown with Red Hulk, which is why some viewers found it surprising when that was the movie’s climactic action sequence. Brave New World teases President Ross’ transformation into Red Hulk throughout its run time, but Red Hulk doesn’t emerge until the very end.

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Unfortunately for Marvel, heavily promoting the Red Hulk fight did not seem to generate excitement for Brave New World. The film ended its box office run as one of the lowest-grossing installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, earning just $415.1 million worldwide. Brave New World was also plagued by mixed reviews, which hurt its commercial prospects.

Onah’s reasoning is sound. Even though Marvel Studios is renowned for its levels of intense secrecy, it’s extremely difficult to keep everything about a film under lock and key. There are a lot of moving pieces when it comes to blockbusters, especially when tie-in merchandise is involved. To prove Onah’s point, there are Superman toys out there that have spoiled a fight against a yeti-type creature and the secret identity of the villain the Hammer of Boravia. Marvel’s partners were definitely interested in producing Red Hulk toys and collectibles, which likely would have leaked ahead of time if promotion for the movie was handled differently. It made sense for Marvel to be proactive and incorporate Red Hulk throughout the marketing campaign.

The unfortunate byproduct of this is audiences spent nearly the entire film waiting for Red Hulk to show up, which illustrates how much of a no-win scenario this was for the filmmakers. If Marvel had held off showing Red Hulk in trailers, there’s a good chance something would have leaked, spoiling an intended surprise. But after making him such a big part of marketing, some audiences were disappointed to see Red Hulk have such little screen time in the final film. It goes to show there’s no perfect strategy for promoting a blockbuster, even for Marvel Studios.