A Simple Guide to Fixing the Hulk in Endgame
The Russos fucked up a tiny bit here. Mainly because they like to play favorites. But whatever, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Endgame is a huge movie. But here’s how they could have pulled off the Hulk a little bit better while keeping just about everything else in the movie exactly the same:
1. Bruce doesn’t go off and live alone. He stays at the Complex with Natasha and the remaining Avengers. It would make narrative sense, since Natasha was the one who best understood both the Hulk and Bruce himself. She can help him come down after a transformation. She could have helped with the merge.
2. Staying with Natasha means combat training. In the movie, he states that he felt like he was to blame for the Snap because first Hulk lost, then Banner lost. Hulk lost because there was little to no strategy to his fighting, just rage. Banner lost because, though he was ingenious with the Hulkbuster suit, he has little to no combat knowledge. Professor Hulk would be the brain and the brawn, yeah? But Bruce’s brain in Hulk’s body doesn’t automatically mean master of combat, which he’d need to be in order to stand a chance against Thanos. Thus, he’d need combat training. Of course, the most suitable for that would be Natasha. Steve would also be a tremendous option. But given that he was away living in New York, I’d imagine those training sessions to occur on a semi-regular basis.
3. Having Bruce live in the Complex means that the run-time gets cut a little bit shorter. They don’t have to go visit him in a diner or anything. He’s present when Scott appears from the Quantum Realm. When they try time travel and mess up with the EP Paradox (Scott turns into a teen, old man, baby, and himself respectively), they decide to go visit Tony. Tony rejects the notion, at first, but runs simulations at night. Just like in the movie, he talks to Pepper and goes with the Avengers.
4. That’s it. Literally everything is the exact same, except Bruce has been living in the complex. His self-confidence is warranted because now he’s no longer struggling with himself internally, plus he has the ability to fight properly. Nobody will ever lose because of his own shortcomings again.
The only thing that would be a little different is perhaps that Natasha wouldn’t be so lonely in the Complex. And besides, even if she does have a friend there, she’d still be upset over Clint’s rampage, so we wouldn’t even really lose that scene where she’s crying with the sandwich.
5. Bruce should’ve played a bit more of a part in that final battle. I would have been happy with him even just helping Ant-Man taking out the Chitauri leviathans. It would have been a great callback to possibly the single best moment in The Avengers, which is the movie that made all of this possible. Preferably, he also could’ve helped Captain Marvel take on Thanos, but I’d even have been fine without that much. Hulk got no screentime in the third act, which is a major injustice given that he’s one of the Original Six Avengers.
Thus ends my little rant.
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