THE INCREDIBLE HULK Star Lou Ferrigno Says He Can’t Take Mark Ruffalo’s Version of The Hulk Seriously

As you all know, Lou Ferrigno played The Hulk in the classic 1978 series The Incredible Hulk with Bill Bixby, who portrayed Dr. David Banner. I loved that show! I watched it all the time as a kid! It’s a show I should revisit again soon because it’s been a very, very long time since I’ve watched it.

Anyway, for those of you who might have wondered what Ferrigno thinks of Mark Ruffalo’s version of The Hulk, he recently shared his thoughts at Montreal Comic Con where he revealed that he can’t take Ruffalo’s version of The Hulk/Bruce Banner seriously. He’s just not a fan of how Marvel Studios is treating the character:

“Mark is a wonderful actor. But we’ve had three different actors — we’ve had Eric Bana, Edward Norton and Mark Ruffalo. I like Bill Bixby the best, I like Edward Norton. But Ruffalo — I think he’s a wonderful actor, he blends in with the Marvel aspect of the Avengers — but I can’t take him seriously enough.

“Bill has that intensity, and you knew that when he was in danger, you could feel that intensity. But because of Marvel and Disney, they’ve taken a different direction. You can’t take it as seriously as the original series.”

While I have enjoyed how The Hulk has been played with in the MCU, Ferrigno does make a good point. The dark intensity of The Hulk has been stripped away with a goofy and comic Hulk. He went on to say that that intensity is “why people just loved it (the original series) so much.” He added:

“I’ve got so many fans come up to me, they tell me when they were young, they were fighting to watch it. They’d get behind the couch, but when they see me as the Hulk — they want to see the Hulk because of that attraction, because it’s a build-up, the adrenaline, that’s what makes the show.”

Avengers: Endgame introduced a whole new version of The Hulk, who has been referred to as “Smart Hulk” and this was a result of Banner merging his personality with Hulk’s brute strength. He found a way to merge the best of both worlds. It turns out that this was a direction that Ferrigno’s Hulk would have eventually taken and it was being planned as a TV movie called Revenge of the Incredible Hulk. Ferrigno explained:

“Before Bill died, we did the death of the Hulk — we were planning to, [in] the next movie of the week, they find David Banner, they bring him back to life, but this time as the Hulk, I have David Banner’s brain. Interesting.

“David inside of me functioning, I had David Banner as the Hulk. But unfortunately, Bill got sick and he passed on. It’s a good question because you would have seen a whole different side of the Hulk, and also of Bill Bixby, because they were gonna go in that other direction.”

I really would have loved to see that. It’s a shame that we never got to. 

What do you all think about what Lou Ferrigno has to say about Mark Ruffalo’s version of Bruce Banner/The Hulk?