Holy crap, youāre right. If Obito can become the ten tails Jinchuriki with only a legās worth of Eight Tales chakra, then this should legitimately be possible.
The Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok is not the same character from the previous MCU films. The Hulk (I think itās important to stress that Bruce and Hulk are separate characters, and I will be focusing solely on the Hulk here) has had a consistent characterization fromĀ The Incredible Hulk to TheĀ Avengers: Age of Ultron. This is completely thrown away in Thor: Ragnarok, and I have a serious problem with that.
First, Iāll describe what the Hulkās character actually was. When Bruce first turns into the Hulk in The Incredible Hulk (after the montage at the start), he speaks his first ever line of dialogue in the MCU; and it says a lot about him.Ā āLeave me alone.ā There are a few obvious things you can deduce from this line.
The Hulk does not want to fight. As the scene continues, Hulk beats the soldiers easily, so it isnāt that heās scared or worried heāll get hurt. This desire to avoid a fight might be because he doesnāt actually like violence, or it might be because he doesnāt deem them worthy of a fight. Weāll return to this later for clarification.
Hulk isnāt as stupid as one might assume. His first line of dialogue EVER is a complete sentence spoken in 1st person. He is clearly capable of clear, grammatical speech all the way back in 2008.
Hulk isnāt just a monster of blind rage. Sure heās angry, but heās got a clear enough head to give his opponents the opportunity of avoiding a fight altogether.
The main take away is that Hulk isnāt a mindless monster.
The Incredible Hulk makes it clear that Hulk isnāt stupid. Itās the opposite in fact. Heās quite smart; he just doesnāt understand how the world works, at least not fully. Basically, heās high in INT and low in WIS.Ā
Now, why do I claim Hulk is smart? Multiple times throughout the film he is able to come up with intelligent solutions to problems heās presented with. When Hulk is being bombarded by the sound cannons, heās clever enough to use one piece of scrap metal as a shield against the cannon, allowing him to aim and throw the other piece of scrap metal at said cannon to destroy it. When fighting Abomination, heās clever enough to turn a car into makeshift brass knuckles. When the helicopter is about to burst into flames, Hulk is clever enough (and quick-thinking enough) to use a sonic clap to snuff out the fire. These arenāt the actions of an idiot.
Now, to be fair, Hulk doesnāt do anything all that clever in The Avengers and The Avengers: Age of Ultron. However, heās never faced with an opponent too strong for a single punch to deal with (aside from Thor and Iron Man, but Hulk clearly isnāt in his right mind during either of those fights), so he doesnāt need to.
So what do I mean when I say that Hulk doesnāt understand how the world works? Well, in The Incredible Hulk, he believes that the thunder storm is an actual enemy that might hurt Betty. He doesnāt understand what a thunder storm is.
Let me return to something I briefly mentioned earlier. Hulkās first line isĀ āLeave me alone.ā If you pay attention to Hulkās actions in each film, it becomes clear that Hulk doesnāt actually like to fight. HeĀ only fights in self-defense or in the defense of others. The only exception being his first appearance in The Avengers and the fight in Africa in The Avengers: Age of Ultron, and like I said before, Hulk isnāt in his right mind for either fight. For the former, heās being influenced by the scepter, and for the latter, heās under the control of Scarlet Witch.
Speaking of the Scarlet Witch, once the effects of her spell wear off, Hulk is clearly not pleased to find that heās hurt innocent people. At the end of the film, he leaves a potential relationship with Black Widow out of fear of hurting her. How do I conclude this? Well, Joss Whedon clearly states this in his commentary for the film. Besides that, itās the simplest conclusion you can make when you look at the evidence. Hulk is upset to find that heās lost control and hurt innocent people. Then, he purposefully disobeys Black Widowās instructions on how to return to her, opting instead to fly far away from all the people he cares about. He leaves because he doesnāt want to hurt the people he cares about.
In The Avengers, Hulk smiles when Captain America instructs him toĀ āsmash.ā One might try to argue that heās happy because he likes violence, but Iād argue that evidence points to a different conclusion. Hulk is happy because not only does he get the chance to defend innocent people, he also (for the first time ever) gets to fight side-by-side with people that trust and respect him. He gets to fight against the bad guys, which we see again at the start of The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
To summarize: The Hulk from The Incredible Hulk to The Avengers: Age of Ultron is an intelligent character who tries to avoid fights, only engaging in them when he needs to defend himself, to defend someone he cares about, or to defend general innocents.
Is this the same character we see in Thor: Ragnarok?
No.
In Thor: Ragnarok, Hulkās INT and WIS stats seem to have swapped. He more accurately understands how the world works, but heās dumber. He understands what a QuinJet is, but heās mentally a child. Sure he talks more, but since when does talking a lot indicate intelligence? Even though he showed signs of proper speech in The Incredible Hulk, heās still stuck with broken grammar and 3rd person. His personality is drastically more childish and immature than the previous films. Hulk doesnāt display any ingenuity in fighting, other than PUNCH HARDER.Ā
And now Hulk doesnāt seem to care about his friends. He worked side-by-side with Thor during The Avengers to protect the people of New York. Sure, he punches him after defeating a leviathan, but its clearly just a joke, and he doesnāt mean any real harm by it. In Thor: Ragnarok, he attempts to kill Thor in the arena even when Thor makes it clear that he doesnāt want to fight (and yes, I mean kill. As far as I can tell, these fights are supposed to be to the death, and Hulkās final move was clearly meant to kill). Hulk also shows no sympathy to the potential extinction of Thorās people and actually laughs at his suffering.
Also, I find it rather insulting when the film implies Hulk has had no problem murdering innocent people for two years. Remember that Hulk is battling against slaves forced to fight him. Doug, while just a silly joke on the surface, was a real person (a slave forced into the arena) that the Hulk killed.
Does this really seem like the same character who left Black Widow out of fear of hurting her?
Tangent: AND DONāT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HOW NERFED HULK IS IN THE THOR FIGHT. Hulk should win that fight easily. Why? Hulk was shown to be capable of killing a leviathan with a single punch. Thor has never demonstrated an equivalent feat WITH HIS HAMMER. And youāre telling me that Thor can win a fight against the Hulk with no hammer? A HULK THAT HAS SPENT THE LAST 2 YEARS DOING NOTHING BUT FIGHTING. I call foul on that.
In conclusion: The Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok is not the same character from the previous Marvel films. Heās been completely rewritten for the purposes of the movie without any consideration of consistency. Hulk is written to be who the general public thinksĀ he is, not who he actually is.
I've never understood the complaint that Moffat's finales don't make sense. I've always (for the most part) understood them just fine. In fact, I've always been rather annoyed at how little though RTD puts into the plots of his finales.
Maybe the difference is that RTD tended to throw his hands in the air and be like "whatever, just go with it," while Moffat tended to be super meticulous with his plots. The result is, people just accept whatever RTD throws at them while people are more critical of Moffat's scripts (while simultaneously being unwilling to think too hard about it).
Itās like people recognize that Moffatās scripts are complex but are too lazy to think them through. The result is: if people donāt immediately understand how everything fits together they jump toĀ ādoesnāt make sense.ā I get that Moffatās writing was complicated (series 5-7 tell one large story in reverse, starting at the end and ending at the beginning) but can you at last TRY to put the pieces together?
I think Moffat was feeling annoyed about these complaints as well, so he threw in some scenes of characters blatantly explaining things that should be obvious to the viewer (In Time of the Doctor, The Doctor and Tasha Lem discuss how River was created to kill him and how the Silence blew up the TARDIS).
Iām not saying every explanation Moffat threw at us was satisfying, but they at least made sense. The Doctorās regeneration at the end of Series 4 doesnāt make any sense (youāre saying that regeneration heals the Doctorās body then destroys it and replaces it with a new one? Thatās completely pointless and inefficient). But I rarely hear anyone complain about it.
Let me make it clear. Some of Moffatās plot points genuinely donāt make sense (the Doctor remembers all two billion years in Heaven Sent without any explanation of HOW), but such things were the exception, not the rule. This problem was much more common during the Tennant Era. I donāt think ANYTHING in the End of Time makes any sense AT ALL.
To conclude: I donāt understand some of the hate for Moffatās plots, and I donāt understand why RTDās plots get a free pass.
So Iām doing a chronological rewatch of classic Doctor Who (will be done in 3029, after which Iāll start up Legend of the Galactic Heroes), and noting that a lot of things the modern series probably sees as subversive were already done long before.
For instance, the case of poor Victoria Waterfield, played by Deborah Watling for 8 serials during the Second Doctorās run.Ā She was a sheltered but plucky girl from the Victorian period. Her first story sees her house blown up and her father killed by Daleks. She then witnessed what was meant to be their self-genocidal civil war. Auspicious! With no one to stay with (mom was already Disneyed before the story began) and an adventurous spirit, she decided to head off into the TARDIS.
In the next story, the crew encounter the Cybermen. And then the Great Intelligence, which is what happens when Yog-Sothoth decides to show up in a childrenās sci-fi serial without toning down his comic horror bullshit. Next up come the Ice Warriors. For a change of pace, she winds up in the clutches of a world-conquering mastermind with the Doctorās face in the future hellscape of 2018. Next story, Great Intelligence again, and this time Azathoth is not playing around. Finally she winds up having to scream her lungs out fighting off eldritch sea-weed corrupting a mining operation. And what a wonderful slice of the universe she saw: a frozen tomb, a frozen Himalayan monastery besieged by Yeti and a mad god, a frozen glacier besieged by Martians, Australia, the London underground besieged by Yeti and a mad god, and a mining rig. Oh boy, thanks Doctor, I never liked having toes anyway.
(Victoria, pictured here screaming in terror because sheās in a goddamn glacier during a goddamn ice age and menaced by a goddamn 7 foot tall hissing crocodile robot soldier bastard from Mars, as one does. As a side note, one nice thing about the Second Doctor era is that the two male leads are about 5ā²8ā³ and the tiny female companions are a good head shorter than them, which makes the monsters look enormous)
And back then, every serial began immediately after the next, so this whole terror-marathon (terrathon?) takes place over about 10 horrible days. Also because of this time crunch, other than maybe the end of his first serial and the beginning of the second where you could maybe fudge the numbers and squeeze in some adventures, the second Doctor only lived about six weeks at most, which is pretty upsetting.
(Victoria, pictured alongside the Doctor and Jaime after nearly being sucked into the roaring, seemingly intelligent vortex between all moments in time and space)
But whatās interesting is that the writers and actress acknowledged this, and played with it to its logical, sad conclusion. The character who started out plucky and ready to fight back gets oddly quiet (when sheās not screaming in stark terror at the machinations of an alien god) by her penultimate story, and during the final, Fury from the Deep, is a nervous wreck who has trouble sleeping from the trauma. She snaps at her companions at one point, asking how they could handle this constant horror. Once the adventure is over she says her goodbyes and decided to stay with a decent family she met during the adventures, and thatās it. Thereās no grand finale, nor a flippant, happy āoh well, we had a good time traveling, but time to settle down - farewell!ā like many early companions received. Thereās none of that āthis companion is the most important person everā chest-thumping of the modern era, or a tragic heroic death. This is a decent, normal character who saw that she simply was not capable ofĀ existing in a constant state of mortal danger and decided to opt out of that frankly horrible lifestyle. And thatās a pretty bold move considering how the series was written at the time.
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